[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8572-2003Jan31.html N. Korea's Nuclear Plans Were No Secret By Walter Pincus In November 2001, when the Bush administration was absorbed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, intelligence analysts at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory completed a highly classified report and sent it to Washington. The report concluded that North Korea had begun construction of a plant to enrich uranium that could be used in nuclear weapons, according to administration and congressional sources. The findings meant that North Korea was secretly circumventing a 1994 agreement with the United States in which it promised to freeze a nuclear weapons program. Under that deal, the North stopped producing plutonium. Now, however, there was evidence that the North was embarking on a hidden quest for nuclear weapons down another path, using enriched uranium. Although the report was hand-delivered to senior Bush administration officials, no one focused on it because of 9/11, according to an official at Livermore, one of the nation's two nuclear weapons laboratories. An informed member of Congress offered the same conclusion. The findings of the Livermore report were confirmed in a June 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, a major assessment by the CIA and all other intelligence agencies. These reports are part of a complex and hidden trail of intelligence about the North Korean effort that has raised questions about why the Bush administration waited until early October 2002 to confront officials in the capital, Pyongyang, with the intelligence -- and to go public several weeks later -- when details had been accumulating for more than two years. The North Korean drive to enrich uranium came as the Bush administration was trying to build support for military action against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on grounds he was hiding a program of weapons of mass destruction and would be more dangerous if he obtained nuclear weapons. Some critics say the Bush administration kept secret the most worrisome intelligence about a North Korean nuclear plant out of concern that public disclosure would undermine the campaign against Iraq, or interfere with the pursuit of Osama bin Laden and his network. Top administration officials have repeatedly denied that they suppressed the intelligence for political reasons. Today, the administration faces new challenges as satellite data reportedly show North Korea moving fuel rods from a reactor site that was mothballed under the 1994 agreement. The site contains 8,000 such rods which, if reprocessed, could yield enough plutonium for about five bombs in approximately one month, according to Daniel A. Pinkston, senior research associate and Korea specialist at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. Moving the rods away from the storage site could make it much harder for outsiders to monitor whether North Korea was using them to build a bomb. Since 1994, the rods had been in storage under international monitoring, but recently the inspectors from the U.N.-chartered International Atomic Energy Agency were expelled from the country. CIA analysts said they now believe North Korea is moving full speed toward building a weapon with plutonium. U.S. intelligence has never included firm evidence that North Korea actually possesses a bomb, although there has been speculation that it had one or more weapons. North Korea also has missiles that could be used to deliver a weapon, including between 500 and 600 missiles modified from the Soviet-built Scud, with relatively short ranges of 150 to 300 miles. Also, in 1993 North Korea tested a missile with an 800-mile range, which could reach Japan, and in 1998 launched a three-stage missile over Japan. One stage flew an estimated 3,450 miles before breaking up in the Pacific Ocean. The following year, North Korea announced a moratorium on missile tests, but recently threatened to resume them. Pakistan Gave Plans The history of the intelligence about North Korea's drive to enrich uranium underscores how the effort to stop weapons proliferation is made more complex by other foreign policy goals. For example, the Livermore report included the disclosure that Pakistani scientists were the source of the plans showing the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, how uranium is enriched, the sources said. Just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, joined the United States in the fight against bin Laden and the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan. The United States, in return, dropped sanctions imposed on Pakistan for pursuing a nuclear program. According to one senior administration official, it was at this point that
Re: [CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- In a message dated 1/21/2003 2:20:38 AM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: France would never "associate ourselves with military intervention that is not supported by the international community," de Villepin added. "We think that military intervention would be the worst possible solution." Well, at least someone is making sense. The chicken-hawks in DC can only see all those oil wells. Prudy A HREF=""www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis 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://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=""Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ 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] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19221-2003Jan20.html France Vows to Block Iraq War Resolution By Glenn Kessler and Colum Lynch UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 20 -- France suggested today it would wage a major diplomatic fight, including possible use of its veto power, to prevent the U.N. Security Council from passing a resolution authorizing military action against Iraq. France's opposition to a war, emphatically delivered here by Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, is a major blow for the Bush administration, which has begun pouring tens of thousands of troops into the Persian Gulf in preparation for a military conflict this spring. The administration had hoped to mark the final phase in its confrontation with Iraq when U.N. weapons inspectors deliver a progress report Monday. But in a diplomatic version of ambush, France and other countries used a high-level Security Council meeting on terrorism to lay down their markers for the debate that will commence next week on the inspectors' report. Russia and China, which have veto power, and Germany, which will chair the Security Council in February, also signaled today they were willing to let the inspections continue for months. Only Britain appeared to openly support the U.S. position that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has thwarted effective inspections. If war is the only way to resolve this problem, we are going down a dead end, de Villepin told reporters. Already we know for a fact that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs are being largely blocked, even frozen. We must do everything possible to strengthen this process. The United Nations, he said, should stay on the path of cooperation. The other choice is to move forward out of impatience over a situation in Iraq to move towards military intervention. We believe that today nothing justifies envisaging military action. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in the face of such comments, departed from his prepared text on terrorism and implored his colleagues to remember that the Security Council resolution passed unanimously Nov. 8 gave Iraq a last chance to meet its obligations. We must not shrink from our duties and our responsibilities when the material comes before us next week, Powell said. He used a variation of the phrase must not shrink three more times as he addressed the council. During the weeks of debate on the Iraq resolution, French officials had indicated they were open to some sort of military intervention if Iraq did not comply. But now the French appear to have set much higher hurdles for support. Rising opposition to war, particularly in France, appears to have played a role in the hardening positions on the Security Council. Foreign officials are also aware of polls in the United States suggesting that support for a war drops dramatically if the Bush administration does not have U.N. approval. While the United Nations was debating today, U.S. military officials announced that the Army is sending a force of about 37,000 soldiers, spearheaded by the Texas-based 4th Infantry Division, to the Persian Gulf region. It is the largest ground force identified among an estimated 125,000 U.S. troops ordered to deploy since Christmas Eve, the Associated Press reported. At the United Nations, several foreign ministers said a war in Iraq would spawn more terrorist acts around the globe and, in the words of Germany's Joschka Fischer, have disastrous consequences for long-term regional stability. Terrorism is far from being crushed, said Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. We must be careful not to take unilateral steps that might threaten the unity of the entire [anti-]terrorism coalition. In this context we are strictly in favor of a political settlement of the situation revolving around Iraq. Powell replied: We cannot fail to take the action that may be necessary because we are afraid of what others might do. We cannot be shocked into impotence because we are afraid of the difficult choices that are ahead of us. But when the foreign ministers emerged from the council debate and addressed reporters, it appeared that Powell's pleas had made little impact. Although President Bush said last week he was sick and tired of games and deception, Fischer said the inspections were a success. Iraq has complied fully with all relevant resolutions and cooperated very closely with the U.N. team on the ground, Fischer said. We think things are moving in the right direction, based on the efforts of the inspection team, and [they] should have all the time which is needed. Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said Monday's report should be regarded as a new beginning rather than an end to inspections. The chief weapons
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com A little blowback for entering into entangling alliances ... you don't always get the upper hand ... To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19221-2003Jan20.html France Vows to Block Iraq War Resolution By Glenn Kessler and Colum Lynch UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 20 -- France suggested today it would wage a major diplomatic fight, including possible use of its veto power, to prevent the U.N. Security Council from passing a resolution authorizing military action against Iraq. France's opposition to a war, emphatically delivered here by Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, is a major blow for the Bush administration, which has begun pouring tens of thousands of troops into the Persian Gulf in preparation for a military conflict this spring. The administration had hoped to mark the final phase in its confrontation with Iraq when U.N. weapons inspectors deliver a progress report Monday. But in a diplomatic version of ambush, France and other countries used a high-level Security Council meeting on terrorism to lay down their markers for the debate that will commence next week on the inspectors' report. Russia and China, which have veto power, and Germany, which will chair the Security Council in February, also signaled today they were willing to let the inspections continue for months. Only Britain appeared to openly support the U.S. position that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has thwarted effective inspections. If war is the only way to resolve this problem, we are going down a dead end, de Villepin told reporters. Already we know for a fact that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs are being largely blocked, even frozen. We must do everything possible to strengthen this process. The United Nations, he said, should stay on the path of cooperation. The other choice is to move forward out of impatience over a situation in Iraq to move towards military intervention. We believe that today nothing justifies envisaging military action. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in the face of such comments, departed from his prepared text on terrorism and implored his colleagues to remember that the Security Council resolution passed unanimously Nov. 8 gave Iraq a last chance to meet its obligations. We must not shrink from our duties and our responsibilities when the material comes before us next week, Powell said. He used a variation of the phrase must not shrink three more times as he addressed the council. During the weeks of debate on the Iraq resolution, French officials had indicated they were open to some sort of military intervention if Iraq did not comply. But now the French appear to have set much higher hurdles for support. Rising opposition to war, particularly in France, appears to have played a role in the hardening positions on the Security Council. Foreign officials are also aware of polls in the United States suggesting that support for a war drops dramatically if the Bush administration does not have U.N. approval. While the United Nations was debating today, U.S. military officials announced that the Army is sending a force of about 37,000 soldiers, spearheaded by the Texas-based 4th Infantry Division, to the Persian Gulf region. It is the largest ground force identified among an estimated 125,000 U.S. troops ordered to deploy since Christmas Eve, the Associated Press reported. At the United Nations, several foreign ministers said a war in Iraq would spawn more terrorist acts around the globe and, in the words of Germany's Joschka Fischer, have disastrous consequences for long-term regional stability. Terrorism is far from being crushed, said Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. We must be careful not to take unilateral steps that might threaten the unity of the entire [anti-]terrorism coalition. In this context we are strictly in favor of a political settlement of the situation revolving around Iraq. Powell replied: We cannot fail to take the action that may be necessary because we are afraid of what others might do. We cannot be shocked into impotence because we are afraid of the difficult choices that are ahead of us. But when the foreign ministers emerged from the council debate and addressed reporters, it appeared that Powell's pleas had made little impact. Although President Bush said last week he was sick and tired of games and deception, Fischer said the inspections were a success. Iraq has complied fully with all relevant resolutions and cooperated very closely with the U.N. team on the ground, Fischer said. We think things are moving in the right direction, based on the efforts of the inspection team, and [they] should have all the time which is needed. Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said Monday's
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28625-2003Jan8.html The View From Symantec's Security Central By Leslie Walker An ordinary office building on Route 1 in Alexandria offers a rare window into the Internet hacker wars and a few clues to why Uncle Sam wants more monitoring capabilities in cyberspace. Inside a cavernous room on the first floor there, security analysts for Symantec sit in long, curved rows 24 hours a day, working on computers and facing a wall of theater-size screens. Information displayed on the screens helps them keep tabs on whether any attacks are underway at any of the company's more than 600 corporate clients. Every five minutes or so, a giant, illuminated globe appears on the central screen and starts to rotate, displaying the locations worldwide where hackers are launching the most attacks. Symantec uses special technology to monitor a huge chunk of the public Internet along with the internal nooks and crannies of its clients' private networks, looking for telltale signs of computer break-ins. Its software constantly compares current hacker activity with a database of prior attacks, then displays in red the names of countries where an unusual amount of malicious Internet activity is originating that day. The rotating globe also displays the number of attempted break-ins against Symantec clients over the past 24 hours in the 10 most active countries. On a recent Friday, the globe showed more than 16,000 attempted break-ins originating from the United States, which often ranks as the world's top launching pad for computer hackers. Brazil ranked No. 4 with 722 attacks. South Korea, Japan, Germany and Taiwan also frequently appear on Symantec's top 10 list for malicious computer activity. Big numbers are par for the course at the Alexandria center, where analysts detect more than 15,000 discrete security events against Symantec's clients every day. About 4,000 are deemed real hacker attacks after further analysis, company officials said. You can tell from these statistics that it's the Wild West out there on the Internet, said Grant Geyer, who supervises the 12,000-square-foot facility. Companies need to do whatever they can to protect themselves. The four-year-old operation, which includes special monitoring and data mining technology, was created by a local start-up called Riptech. Last year, California-based Symantec paid about $350 million to buy Riptech and three other electronic-security firms (Recourse Technologies, SecurityFocus and Mountain Wave) that had developed proprietary anti-hacker technology. Symantec merged Riptech's operations with its own and now has four similar centers -- in Britain, Japan, Germany and San Antonio. Symantec is known as the maker of the Norton anti-virus software that runs on many home computers. But like competitor Network Associates, it has been diversifying its security arsenal in an attempt to be at the forefront of an emerging industry -- managing cybersecurity on behalf of companies and governments. Mid-size companies typically pay Symantec $1,000 to $2,000 a month to monitor their networks. The firm has big clients, too -- including 55 of the Fortune 500 companies -- and does work for several federal agencies. The managed-security industry is complex and growing fast, especially as companies awake to the difficulties of interpreting the deluge of data on their computer networks. Not only is it hard to make sense of who's doing what on a firm's network, Web sites and wireless devices, but almost no company can see what is happening on other computer networks. One advantage managed-security firms have is a global view that lets them detect patterns. The Alexandria facility is a private, miniature version of the kind of public Internet-monitoring capability the Bush administration wants the federal government to develop to protect the nation's electronic infrastructure. The administration is readying for release in a few weeks a final draft of its national strategy for bolstering cybersecurity. Hacking -- unauthorized break-ins on private computers and networks -- is increasing dramatically as more computers connect to the Internet. So, too, is the distribution of computer viruses and worms that travel the globe via images, documents and plain-text e-mail messages. Riptech, one of the few companies that monitored global hacking, detected a rise in malicious computer traffic during the first half of last year amounting to an annual rate of 65 percent. One reason for the jump was the explosive growth in the distribution of point-and-click hacking tools online. At the same time, more critical commercial and government operations are moving online, presenting a greater
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61009-2002Dec31.html Firms Accused of Giving Space Technology to China By John Mintz The State Department has charged that two of the country's largest aerospace companies, Hughes Electronics Corp. and Boeing Satellite Systems Inc., illegally transferred sensitive U.S. space technology to China in the 1990s that could have helped Beijing's military develop intercontinental missiles. If a federal administrative judge and, later, a top State Department official agree with the allegations in a 32-page State Department charging letter filed without public notice last Thursday, the companies could be fined as much as $60 million and barred for three years from selling controlled technologies overseas, a penalty that could particularly hurt Boeing. The companies have strenuously denied wrongdoing in the case, which began with a series of failed space launches in China starting in 1995. Hughes officials are alleged to have given Chinese experts detailed information about rocketry to help China's space program figure out why its rockets were failing soon after launch. The Hughes Electronics space launch division, which committed the supposed improprieties, was purchased by Boeing in 2000 for $3.7 billion. The two corporate bodies charged by the State Department last week are the Hughes parent company and the division of Boeing that gobbled up the former Hughes space launch unit. This type of administrative charge is extraordinarily rare, U.S. officials said. The filing reflects officials' anger that the two firms have aggressively battled the charges and resisted admitting what they did in China was wrong, they added. We don't believe we've done anything wrong, said Hughes Electronics spokesman Robert Marsocci. We're in negotiations with the State Department, and we'll be reviewing our options. A Boeing spokesman, Dan Beck, said the company would not comment. The Justice Department spent years on a criminal investigation of those companies and a third, Loral Space Communications Ltd., involved in similar activity in China. But several months ago, federal prosecutors informed the firms that they would not file criminal charges. Last January, Loral agreed to pay a $14 million fine and to spend $6 million on internal reforms to stop overseas technology transfers. The government did not file the kind of administrative charges against Loral that it filed last week against Hughes and Boeing. The charging document, signed by William J. Lowell, director of the State Department's office of defense trade controls, said Hughes and Boeing committed 123 violations of the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. Government officials praised Loral for facing up to its past improprieties and imposing corporate guidelines to prevent a recurrence. Officials offered no such praise for Boeing and Hughes. The department has had several rounds of discussion with Hughes and Boeing to explore a resolution similar to the one with Loral, said State Department spokesman Jay Greer. We can note that unlike Loral, Hughes and Boeing have both failed to recognize the seriousness of the violations and have been unprepared to take steps to resolve the matter, or to ensure no recurrence of violations in the future. Hughes and Boeing for years have insisted the State Department is wrong to declare it improper for them to have had discussions with Chinese officials about the space launch failures. The firms point out that during the mid-1990s, their operations in China were covered by Commerce Department regulations that were more lax and, the companies say, allowed for some give and take with Beijing officials. The State Department says that the more stringent export control laws still were in force, and that the companies broke them. After the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, President Ronald Reagan decided in 1988 that U.S. space companies should be allowed to launch their satellites aboard China's Long March rockets to accommodate the fast-growing American telecommunications industry. But the U.S. firms were barred from giving the Chinese any help on their launches without U.S. licenses and supervision by Pentagon inspectors. The U.S. government's fear was that the Chinese could use American know-how on the Long March commercial rocket launches to help the performance of Beijing's nuclear-tipped missiles. The problem was that China's space officials were extremely aggressive in demanding that the U.S. companies provide technology transfer as a condition for entry into the desirable Chinese market. The issue came to a head each time a Long March rocket crashed or failed, because global
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46120-2002Dec27.html Bush's Moonshine Policy By Mary McGrory George W. Bush ends the year with a genuine nuclear crisis on his hands. He has been assiduously trying to foment one with Iraq, dropping bombs on the country and expletives on its leader. But North Korea, which is not just suspected of working on the bomb but of having at least two, has muscled Saddam Hussein off the front pages and made our crusade against Baghdad seem crass: We're starting a war not just for oil or for Ariel Sharon but because we can win it. North Korea is a different story. It has a million men under arms. It has a built-in hostage situation at hand in the presence of 37,000 U.S. soldiers who guard South Korea. Kim Jong Il, the Communist leader of North Korea, almost makes Saddam Hussein look like Rotarian of the Year. While Hussein is welcoming U.N. arms inspectors, Kim is throwing them out. He has dismantled the international surveillance equipment installed by a treaty in 1994; he has announced he is going to make all the weapons-grade plutonium he wants. He is, in short, behaving like the radioactive lunatic he is. And what is George W. Bush, defender of the free world, scourge of terrorists, doing about all this? As of this moment, nothing. As far as we can see, he seems to feel that not speaking to the North Koreans is the solution. Isolation and marginalization will bring these rogues to heel? A leader who will starve his own people to feed his military machine, whose father invaded his neighbor, who shows no acquaintance with reality, will be cowed by a snub from Washington? The president has asked North Korea's neighbors to warn Kim Jong Il of the consequences of his horrendous behavior. Up to now, the Japanese have reported themselves as scared to death. Russia and China seem to have a million other things to do. The incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), says we should talk and talk and talk to the outlaws. His is a lone voice. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld exhibited a reflex swagger response. The North Koreans better watch out. They mustn't think for a minute we couldn't wage war against them. Just in time for Christmas, he brought our war list up to three -- the one against al Qaeda, which we seem to have forgotten, the one brewing in Iraq -- and now Pyongyang? We should perhaps remember that President Bush has never liked talking to Koreans. His first overseas visitor was the estimable Kim Dae Jung, whom Bush snubbed. Bush, as he was eager to demonstrate, was not a fan. Kim's sin? He was instituting a sunshine policy with the North, ending a half-century of estrangement. Bush, who looked upon North Korea as the most potent argument for his obsession to build a national missile defense, saw Kim, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, as nothing but trouble. He sent him home humiliated and empty-handed. Kim's successor, Roh Moo Hyun, may be even worse. He is a passionate advocate of the sunshine policy, and he seeks a more mature relationship with the United States -- bad news for Bush. This ugly international set-to occurs just when the president has scored his most dazzling domestic political triumph. The hullabaloo over Trent Lott, the prospective leader of the Senate, was caused by Lott's letting the cat out of the bag on the subject of the Republicans' covert Southern strategy. Lott told a birthday party for Strom Thurmond what everyone has always known: The strategy was based on race. Republicans were mortified. Then Bush apprentice Karl Rove stepped in and saved the day. Bush and Rove engineered Lott's resignation and the substitution of glamorous Bill Frist of Tennessee, literally a medicine man, who spends his off-time flying his own plane to Africa to minister to AIDS patients. Bush issued a sharp criticism of Lott's remarks and nourished the Frist boomlet into a surge, all the while insisting through his spokesman that he did not think Lott should resign. Republicans are delighted. In an assembly largely given over to small minds and big egos, Frist's aura as a healer and his proclivity for rendering first aid on Capitol Hill make him a romantic figure. It's like getting Lord Byron on your condo board. The finesse of the operation was universally applauded. The qualities displayed -- the regard for the other guy's sensibilities, the willingness to forgo credit, are ones that can be successful in foreign policy negotiations. Bush could never send Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton to represent him in the deadly and proliferating tension in North Korea -- he blames them for coddling Pyongyang. But he might send Karl Rove. He knows how the game is played. A
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52241-2002Dec29.html U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup By Michael Dobbs High on the Bush administration's list of justifications for war against Iraq are President Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons, nuclear and biological programs, and his contacts with international terrorists. What U.S. officials rarely acknowledge is that these offenses date back to a period when Hussein was seen in Washington as a valued ally. Among the people instrumental in tilting U.S. policy toward Baghdad during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was Donald H. Rumsfeld, now defense secretary, whose December 1983 meeting with Hussein as a special presidential envoy paved the way for normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Declassified documents show that Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an almost daily basis in defiance of international conventions. The story of America's involvement with Saddam Hussein in the years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait -- which included large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of chemical and biological precursors -- is a topical example of the underside of U.S. foreign policy. It is a world in which deals can be struck with dictators, human rights violations sometimes overlooked, and accommodations made with arms proliferators, all on the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Throughout the 1980s, Hussein's Iraq was the sworn enemy of Iran, then still in the throes of an Islamic revolution. U.S. officials saw Baghdad as a bulwark against militant Shiite extremism and the fall of pro-American states such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and even Jordan -- a Middle East version of the Communist domino theory. That was enough to turn Hussein into a strategic partner and for U.S. diplomats in Baghdad to routinely refer to Iraqi forces as the good guys, in contrast to the Iranians, who were depicted as the bad guys. A review of thousands of declassified government documents and interviews with former policymakers shows that U.S. intelligence and logistical support played a crucial role in shoring up Iraqi defenses against the human wave attacks by suicidal Iranian troops. The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague. Opinions differ among Middle East experts and former government officials about the pre-Iraqi tilt, and whether Washington could have done more to stop the flow to Baghdad of technology for building weapons of mass destruction. It was a horrible mistake then, but we have got it right now, says Kenneth M. Pollack, a former CIA military analyst and author of The Threatening Storm, which makes the case for war with Iraq. My fellow [CIA] analysts and I were warning at the time that Hussein was a very nasty character. We were constantly fighting the State Department. Fundamentally, the policy was justified, argues David Newton, a former U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, who runs an anti-Hussein radio station in Prague. We were concerned that Iraq should not lose the war with Iran, because that would have threatened Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Our long-term hope was that Hussein's government would become less repressive and more responsible. What makes present-day Hussein different from the Hussein of the 1980s, say Middle East experts, is the mellowing of the Iranian revolution and the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait that transformed the Iraqi dictator, almost overnight, from awkward ally into mortal enemy. In addition, the United States itself has changed. As a result of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, U.S. policymakers take a much more alarmist view of the threat posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. U.S. Shifts in Iran-Iraq War When the Iran-Iraq war began in September 1980, with an Iraqi attack across the Shatt al Arab waterway that leads to the Persian Gulf, the United States was a bystander. The United States did not have diplomatic relations with either Baghdad or Tehran. U.S. officials had almost as little sympathy for Hussein's dictatorial brand of Arab nationalism as for the Islamic fundamentalism espoused by Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. As long as the two countries fought their way to a stalemate, nobody in Washington was disposed to intervene. By the summer of 1982, however, the strategic picture had changed dramatically. After its initial gains, Iraq was on the defensive, and Iranian troops had
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41796-2002Dec26.html Area Housing Boom Drives Out Mobile Homes By Mary Otto The white gate at Holiday Mobile Estates in Jessup reads Maryland's Finest Mobile Home Community. The place is surrounded by trees, seemingly deep in the forest. Joe Parinchak parked his 1965 mobile home here when it was new, and he has stayed. Inside, his wood-paneled home is like a snug old Chris-Craft that boasts a place for everything and everything in its place. Bedroom cubbyholes for shoes, a neat cabinet over the kitchen window for cans of stew. I've enjoyed it, said Parinchak, 80, a retired Army man from Fort Meade. His little home is paid for, and the $445 he pays each month covers his rent of the lot and utilities. The place feels like his safe berth in a world that has changed a lot since he arrived. Since the end of World War II, mobile homes have served as low-cost housing for retirees, young families and working people. And in the Washington area, where the shortage of affordable housing has become a crisis, this private-sector solution has been perfect for a small segment of the population. But Washington's pricey market and expensive development are pressing in on Parinchak's oasis of affordable housing. He can still hear hoot owls at night, but the sprawling Arundel Mills mall that lies beyond the trees epitomizes the powerful economic forces bearing down on area mobile home parks. In some parts of the nation, by comparison, mobile homes have been booming. Their numbers nationally have almost doubled since 1980 and grew by nearly 20 percent in the '90s. In the Washington area, however, the number of mobile homes has been falling, after some growth in the '80s. And the decline came even as the population grew rapidly. In the 1990s, the region added 293,000 housing units, but few of them were targeted to low-income families. And lost in all that development was the future of mobile homes. As the Washington suburbs continue to sprawl, once-outlying mobile home parks have been engulfed. Displacement is the word, said Bruce Savage, a spokesman for the Arlington-based Manufactured Housing Institute, a trade association. The owners can't rationalize keeping these little communities running when they can take the money and run. St. Mary's County lost more than 1,000 manufactured homes in the 1990s, according to the 2000 Census. A number of parks there were overtaken by commercial and suburban growth. One turned into our local Wal-Mart, said Dave Chapman of the county Department of Planning and Zoning. In Fairfax County, another Wal-Mart rose at the site of the former Oak Grove Trailer Park on Route 1. Calvert and Charles counties each lost more than 100 manufactured homes in the past decade, according to the 2000 Census. And on an island between the northbound and southbound lanes of Route 1 in North Laurel, a for sale sign is planted on land that in 2000 was host to three mobile home parks. Across the county line in Anne Arundel, zoning laws and competition for land have placed a ceiling on the growth of the parks, people in the business said. The builders have bought up all the lots if they are buildable, said Rollan Grice, a salesman at Chesapeake Mobile-Modular Homes in Millersville. The lack of space for new mobile homes has sure stifled off affordable housing, he said, taking away an easy way of solving a housing issue for that guy who makes $20,000 to $50,000. As the Washington area has become more affluent -- median household income is $64,000 -- lower-income families have been forced to move farther into the outer suburbs, double up with friends and relatives and search for months to find something they can afford. And as property values rise and developers lean toward high-end homes, mobile home parks are less and less welcome, said Keith Martin, whose family has run Holiday Mobile Estates for four decades. A mobile home park might as well be a leper colony, Martin said. The park has grown to its limits and includes more than 400 spaces, from Parinchak's vintage model in space A-1 to deluxe double-wide manufactured homes, like those occupied by Audrey Palmer in the park's new section. Palmer's home has a pitched roof and high ceilings, an eat-in kitchen, three bedrooms and two baths, including one with a king-size tub. Palmer and her family bought the home for $59,000. And even the fancier models, at $70,000 and higher, sell for roughly half Anne Arundel County's median house price. But the pressure to put this land to other uses is real. You could put 500 townhouses here, Martin said. His father, Hershel Martin, 73, said he has turned down millions for his small kingdom. It's
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31358-2002Dec23.html Smallpox Plan May Force Other Health Cuts By Ceci Connolly The Bush administration's plan to vaccinate as many as 10.5 million medical personnel and emergency responders against smallpox will cost between $600 million and $1 billion and is likely to siphon money from other bioterrorism and public health efforts, local and state officials warn. With most of the 50 states already buckling under budget deficits, the widespread immunization campaign due to begin in late January amounts to the ultimate unfunded federal mandate, said George Hardy, executive director of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. We can't afford to do this at the expense of all other preparedness. For months, city and state leaders have been preparing to inoculate about 450,000 medical professionals who would serve on smallpox response teams in the event of an outbreak. But few expected President Bush to adopt a much broader proposal, known as Phase 2, to encourage every remaining health care worker, police officer, firefighter and emergency medical technician to be immunized. States and localities already are diverting significant resources to smallpox vaccination and there is no end in sight, said Patrick Libbey, executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. We urge that the program be kept at minimal levels and grow only as rapidly as threat assessments demand, so as not to disrupt other basic community health protections or cause unnecessary harm. The decision to revive a vaccine known for its dangerous side effects is a reflection of the changing times, Bush said in announcing the plan. In anticipation of a likely war with Iraq, he ordered mandatory inoculation for 500,000 members of the armed forces and is recruiting volunteers among medical workers and emergency responders to serve as a sort of domestic front line against biological attack. Other Americans will be able to receive the vaccine, even though it has not yet gone through the Food and Drug Administration's licensing and approval process, but the government is recommending against universal vaccination for the general public. The cost of biodefense is rising steadily. Already, the federal government has spent more than $862 million to buy the smallpox vaccine. Last spring, the Bush administration distributed $918 million to state health departments for homeland security, money it says could defray smallpox vaccination costs. We're absolutely committed to working with the states to make this work efficiently and safely, said Tom Skinner, spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There are a lot of dollar figures out there, some of which I believe do not take into account the infrastructure that's been put in place. But that infusion of cash came with extensive demands, said Michael Richardson, acting health director for the District of Columbia. To qualify for the money, states and large cities such as the District submitted detailed plans for improving computer systems, training medical workers and adding emergency hospital beds. The word smallpox wasn't even mentioned, he said. The $10 million given to the city was spent stockpiling medications, hiring epidemiologists and other bioterrorism experts and upgrading the public health laboratory. Richardson said he does not know where the District will find the $3.6 million needed to inoculate 10,000 to 20,000 emergency personnel over and above the first group of 3,000 health care workers. Bill Pierce, spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said he expects Congress to approve an additional $940 million for states to conduct disease surveillance, upgrade labs and improve public health infrastructure. The impact of leaping from 450,000 to as many as 10 million inoculations next spring is far greater than the numbers suggest, state officials said. Mounting a smallpox vaccination program 30 years after routine immunizations were stopped in the United States will require extensive education and training, careful medical screening for people at risk of complications, near-daily checking of inoculation sites and vast data collection, health officials say. Because Phase 1 focuses on medical workers, states plan to rely heavily on hospitals to administer the vaccine and monitor employees for side effects. But hospitals cannot be expected to oversee the second phase, which will entail not only logistical challenges, but also many more medical complications. Historical data suggest that for every 1 million immunized, about one-third will miss at least a day of work because of adverse reactions
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com Nothing like a little speculation to foster a self-fulfilling prophecy ... A:E:R To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34403-2002Dec24.html Sharon Says Iraq May Be Hiding Weapons in Syria JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on Tuesday that Israel suspected that Iraq has been transferring chemical and biological weapons to Israel's arch-foe Syria to hide them from U.N. inspectors. Sharon, in an interview with Israel's Channel Two television, said his comments were based on unconfirmed information and he gave no evidence to support the allegation. What we believe, and I say that we have not yet confirmed it conclusively, is that weapons he wants to hide -- chemical and biological weapons -- have indeed been sent to Syria, Sharon said. He said Israel was trying to verify the information. U.N. weapons inspectors returned to Iraq last month after a four-year hiatus to resume a hunt for alleged weapons of mass destruction, amid threats by the United States to disarm Iraq by force if it does not obey U.N. resolutions. Iraq says its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs have already been destroyed. Israel has stepped up preparations for possible Iraqi missile attacks should the United States go to war against Iraq. Baghdad fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel in the 1991 Gulf War, causing one death and extensive damage in residential areas. Israel and Syria have been in an official state of war for decades. Syria, which took part in the 1991 Gulf War that drove Iraq from Kuwait, has since rebuilt ties with Baghdad after decades of rivalry. Nonetheless, to some surprise, Damascus cast its U.N. Security Council vote last month in favor of resolution 1441, which demands that Iraq disarm or face a possible war. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis 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://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;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] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31589-2002Dec23.html In U.S., Terrorism's Peril Undiminished By Barton Gellman Late last year, in secret, the Bush administration erected a provisional defense against nuclear terrorism in the nation's capital. It was called Ring Around Washington, and it aimed to detect a nuclear or radiological bomb before the weapon could be used. Still under development, according to three knowledgeable sources, the system was pressed into service in a large-scale operational trial. Scientists placed a grid of radiation sensors in the District and at major points of approach by river and road. Vehicles patrolled with mobile sensors. And an elite combat unit from the Joint Special Operations Command, already trained to render harmless a nuclear weapon or its components, moved to heightened alert at a staging area near the capital. Ring Around Washington has since been shut down, the sources said. Under some conditions, which The Washington Post will not describe, the neutron and gamma ray detectors failed to identify dangerous radiation signatures. In other conditions they raised false alarms over low-grade medical waste and the ordinary background emissions of stone monuments. The Energy Department's national laboratories learned a lot about how to operate a distributed network of sensors, one official said, but not enough to keep it in place. U.S. exposure to ruinous attack, more than 15 months into the war with al Qaeda, remains unbounded. The global campaign launched by President Bush has destroyed Osama bin Laden's Afghan sanctuary, drained his financial resources, scattered his foot soldiers and killed or captured some of his most dangerous lieutenants. But there is nothing in al Qaeda's former arsenal -- nothing it was capable of doing on Sept. 11, 2001 -- that the president's advisers are prepared to say is now beyond the enemy's reach. The threat of bin Laden's network -- which the White House considers to number perhaps three dozen men at its vital core -- continues in important ways to outpace the national response. Working-level and senior participants in the conflict, many of them interviewed at length, displayed a striking fatalism even when describing their common belief that the United States will eventually prevail. Nearly all of them, when pressed, said they would measure their success by the frequency, not the absence, of mass-casualty attacks against the American homeland. They're not 10 feet tall, they're not supermen, and in a lot of cases they're very primitive, said retired Army Gen. Wayne A. Downing, who was President Bush's deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism until July 8, referring to al Qaeda. But they are probably more capable than before. One Bush appointee, working full-time in counterterrorism, pointed to Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet's testimony as recently as two months ago that we were vulnerable to suicidal terrorist attacks and we remain vulnerable to them today. The official said: With untold billions spent -- money, personnel and blood -- how can we claim any kind of success if we're just as vulnerable as before? It just doesn't balance. It can't balance. The elements of the U.S. security deficit, as another current official termed it recently, are varied. In their own fields of responsibility, across a wide range of government functions, nearly all of those interviewed acknowledged laboring under threats for which they have no present answer. In some cases they described the challenge as unavoidable. In others they said they had lost opportunities to respond. In still others, implicitly and explicitly, the officials raised questions about the president's choices in the war on terrorism. Thirteen of 20 men that The Post could identify on the government's classified roster of high value targets remain unaccounted for. Bush's overriding objective, a high-ranking official at the heart of the effort said Friday, is to capture or kill the small cadre of leaders he sees as uniquely responsible for al Qaeda's potent threat. We want to get that inner core more than anything, the official said, describing their number as roughly 30. The Post identified the 20 (see box) from interviews and a set of notes made by a participant in the hunt. Called HVTs in the argot of government, the 13 men believed at large include four of the five in the uppermost tier. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, in a brief interview for this report, said we are hunting down systematically members of terrorist networks, but that said, this is not just a numbers game. Some of those involved in the hunt said the government lost many and perhaps most of its best chances
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com http://www.fao.com/images/products/20200415c.jpg The legacy of JonBenet? People as living dolls? AER To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20520-2002Dec21.html Way Too Much Fantasy With That Dream House By Deborah Roffman Still seeking that perfect gift for a special young girl in your life? Well, look no further than page 50 of the FAO Schwarz 2002 holiday catalogue. For a mere $45, you can surprise and delight her with a Lingerie Barbie. And what a Barbie Babe she is, decked out in her sexy black (or, if you prefer, pink) garters, stockings and obligatory stiletto heels. Even her PR is PG, giving the phrase sex toy a whole new level of meaning: Barbie exudes a flirtatious attitude in her heavenly merry widow bustier ensemble accented with intricate lace and matching peekaboo peignoir. Oh darn, reading this too late for holiday gift giving? Not to worry. Mattel plans a February launch for its sixth limited edition Lingerie Barbie, promising she'll be simply sassy in a short pearl-grey satin slip trimmed in black lace and thigh-high stockings that add a hint of flair. A middle school principal in New Hampshire first alerted me to Bimbo, uh, Lingerie Barbie (nickname courtesy of a seventh-grade boy who wanted to know, What's next? 'Playboy Barbie'?). I've been actively assessing the Lingerie Barbie gasp factor for several weeks now. It's huge. Teachers and parents (even among Barbie fans) can't believe their ears when they hear about this one: Disgusting! How dare they! Don't they have little girls of their own? Where will it all end? Enough!! Many teens I know, and even younger children, have been equally outraged. High school students at one all-girls school in Tennessee where I recently spoke were moved to start a national letter-writing campaign to chastise Mattel for this brazen sexualization of children. And girls I know are neither the slightest bit reassured nor deterred by the company's for age 14 and up disclaimer. Get real, said one. No 14-year-old girl would be caught dead playing with a Barbie Doll, 'lingerie' or otherwise. Who do they think they're kidding? Said another: Yeah, right. Maybe they mean 14-year-old boys. As for Mattel, it seems to be playing peekaboo with its own LB marketing strategy. Says company spokeswoman Ria Freydl, We're not marketing it to kids, and true enough, the Barbie Fashion Model Collection can be found in the more adult-oriented collectible section on Mattel's Web site. And yet, consider this tag line on LB #5's blurb: Golden hoop earrings and high heels complete this simple but elegant ensemble, perfect for dress-and-play fun! Dress-and-play fun for adult collectors? I don't think so. At least, I hope not. And though $45 is more than twice what a parent forks out for the average Barbie, it's still far more affordable (and more child friendly) than most of the other Barbie collectibles found in the Schwarz catalogue and those of other mainstream retailers. One 10-year-old in my class wasn't buying any of it. He told me last week he'd actually been given one of the dolls by a 5-year-old cousin who had tired of it. She gives me lots of toys she doesn't want, he said. Most of them I give to charity. But not this one, no way. I threw it in the river. No child should play with something like that. They'll get all the wrong ideas. Out of the mouth of babes -- real honest-to-goodness babes, not Barbie Babes. If 10-year-olds are getting it, maybe, just maybe, the adults out there will begin to see it more clearly, too. I had begun to wonder what it would take. During the past decade, there have been an unprecedented number of assaults on the whole concept of sexual boundaries (with Lingerie Barbie only of the more egregious examples), typically without so much as a peep from the adult world. Maybe we've just been too busy or too overwhelmed to notice, or perhaps we've become so adjusted to the ever-quickening pace of cultural change that the change itself is simply harder and harder to perceive. How else to explain the gradual appearance of soft porn in perfume and clothing advertisements? How and when did that become okay? And when exactly did fashion stop being about getting dressed, and start being about getting -- or increasing the chance that you'll soon be getting -- undressed? About the same time, I guess, that Victoria's Secret decided that lingerie (previously thought of as underwear or private wear) was fashion, too. Wasn't it only a matter of time before we were treated to a prime-time Victoria's Secret lingerie fashion show? And, excuse me, but who was paying attention when the junior streetwalker/sex slave look became the predominant mode of dress among teens and even preteens? Or the
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9342-2002Dec18.html U.S. Social Security May Reach To Mexico By Jonathan Weisman Pushed by the Mexican government, the Bush administration is working on a Social Security accord that would put tens of thousands of Mexicans onto the Social Security roster and send hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits south of the border. White House and Mexican government officials say discussions on an agreement to align the Social Security systems of the two countries are informal and preliminary. But excerpts from an internal Social Security Administration memo obtained this month say the agreement is expected to move forward at an accelerated pace, with the support of both governments, and could be in force by next October. The pact would be the latest, but by far the largest, of a series of treaties designed to ensure that people from one country working in another aren't taxed by both nations' social security systems. In its first year, the agreement is projected to trigger 37,000 new claims from Mexicans who worked in the United States legally and paid Social Security taxes but have been unable to claim their checks, according to a memo prepared by Ted Girdner, the Social Security Administration's assistant associate commissioner for international operations. Extrapolating from U.S. and Mexican government statistics, the accord could cost $720 million a year within five years of implementation. One independent estimate put the total at $1 billion a year -- a large sum, but a trifle compared with the $372 billion in Social Security benefits currently being paid to 46.4 million recipients. Mexican President Vicente Fox has been pushing President Bush to sign a Social Security agreement with Mexico as something of a consolation prize to make up for Bush's failure to pursue promised immigration reforms, according to Latino lobbyists close to the Fox administration. Mexican officials began pressing the White House hard at meetings that preceded the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Los Cabos, Mexico, in October. When the legalization talks began going nowhere, the Mexicans began focusing on this, said Maria Blanco, national senior counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. They really bore in at Los Cabos. Arturo Sarukhan, a top official in Mexico's foreign ministry, said that after Mexico's failure to win a comprehensive package of immigration reforms from Bush, it is lobbying in Washington for important incremental steps. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time, he said. The Social Security agreement, he said, is one of those less-sexy things that Mexico has been pushing to deepen its relationship with the United States and improve the day-to-day lives of Mexicans. Just yesterday, Fox underscored the political pressure he is under domestically to secure concessions from the United States when he journeyed to the border city of Nuevo Laredo to call for an urgent immigration accord to end discrimination against Mexican workers north of the border. Concern is rising on Capitol Hill -- and even among some White House economic aides -- that any agreement on Social Security could add a new burden to the benefits system, just as the baby-boom generation is preparing to retire. House Ways and Means Committee staff members are meeting today with Social Security officials to hash out projected costs for such an agreement. We are concerned about the sheer magnitude of the agreement, said a House Republican aide who is an expert on Social Security. About 94,000 beneficiaries living abroad have been brought into the system by the 20 existing international agreements. A Mexican agreement alone could bring in 162,000 in the first five years. White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said the issue is being explored only at a technical level at this point, and the administration has not yet decided to move forward with formal negotiations. A totalization agreement with Mexico would have significant implications, she said. Miguel Monterrubio, a spokesman for the Mexican Embassy, said several meetings have taken place between the Social Security Administration and its Mexican counterpart since November 2001, but he, too, called them informal. The Social Security memo indicates that work may be further along than both governments are saying. According to the memo, the application workloads generated by an agreement with Mexico will be much larger than those resulting from any of the 20 existing agreements with other countries. In addition to the flurry of new claims, an additional 13,000 Mexicans entitled to benefits but cut off by provisions in recent immigration laws could also begin
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com And of course, it goes without saying that Wolfie and Newt are gonna be on the ground in the first wave. And, they're gonna be there when the three faction (Shi'a, Sunni, Kurd) guerrilla warfare starts up. If you like(d) Kosovaria, you'll love Iraq! AER To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4096-2002Dec17.html Projection on Fall Of Hussein Disputed By Thomas E. Ricks With war possible soon in Iraq, the chiefs of the two U.S. ground forces are challenging the belief of some senior Pentagon civilians that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein will fall almost immediately upon being attacked and are calling for more attention to planning for worst-case scenarios, Defense Department officials said. The U.S. war plan for a possible attack on Iraq, which has been almost a year in the making, calls for a fast-moving ground attack without an overwhelming number of reinforcements on hand. Instead, some follow-on troops would be flown into Iraq from outside the region. Among other things, this rolling start would seek to achieve tactical surprise by launching an attack before the U.S. military appears ready to do so. In addition, the plan calls for some armored units, instead of traveling a predetermined distance and pausing to allow slow-moving supply trucks to catch up, to charge across Iraq until they run into armed opposition and then engage in combat, officials said. Those aspects of the plan, which appear riskier than usual U.S. military practice, worry the chief of the Army, Gen. Eric Shinseki, and the commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. James L. Jones, defense officials said. Shinseki and Jones, who as service chiefs are members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have questioned the contention of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and other top officials that Hussein's government is likely to collapse almost as soon as a U.S. attack is launched, the officials said. The two generals are concerned that the Wolfowitz school may underestimate the risks involved, the officials said. They have argued that planning should prepare thoroughly for worst-case scenarios, most notably one that planners have labeled Fortress Baghdad, in which Hussein withdraws his most loyal forces into the Iraqi capital and challenges the United States to enter into protracted street fighting, perhaps involving chemical or biological weapons. In an interview last night, Wolfowitz rejected the view that he has been overoptimistic in his views. He said he also believes that, You've got to be prepared for the worst case. He added: It would be a terrible mistake for anyone to think they can predict with confidence what the course of a war is going to be. In discussions of the war plan, he said, he has repeatedly emphasized the risk of Hussein using his most terrible weapons. The dispute, which is taking place mainly in secret reviews of the war plan, promises to be the last major issue in the Pentagon's consideration of that plan, as more signs point toward forces being ready to launch a wide-ranging, highly synchronized ground and air attack in six to eight weeks. Psychological operations, such as leafleting and broadcasting into Iraq, have been stepped up lately, and there is talk at the Pentagon of large-scale troop movements or mobilizations being announced soon after the holidays. The debate became more open last week when Jones alluded to it in comments made at a dinner held in his honor by former defense secretary William S. Cohen. Jones is scheduled next month to leave the Marine post to become the commander of U.S. military forces in Europe. At that dinner, Jones indicated that he and other senior officers did not share the optimism of others about the ease of fighting in Iraq. In an interview, Jones said that he did not name who he thought was being overly optimistic. I did not say, 'folks at the Pentagon,' he said. I said I didn't align myself with folks around town who seem to think that this is preordained to be a very easy military operation. If a victory were swiftly won, he continued: It is to be celebrated. But military planners should always plan for the worst case. He insisted that in his remarks he had not expressed a conclusion about how quickly Hussein might fall. He said he believed that he and Shinseki, the Army chief, are of the same view on this. If anything, the Army's leadership is even more worried than Jones, said a senior officer who sides with the Wolfowitz view. The Army really is conservative on this, he said dismissively. The Army also has qualms about the likely burden of postwar peacekeeping in Iraq -- a mission that is likely to be executed mainly by the Army. They're concerned they're going to be left holding the bag after
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4767-2002Dec18.html Conseco Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy INDIANAPOLIS Insurance and finance company Conseco Inc., facing $6.5 billion in debt and a federal investigation of its accounting practices, filed for Chapter 11 protection in the third-largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. Terms were negotiated before Tuesday night's filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Chicago, said Conseco spokesman Mark Lubbers. Conseco, the nation's seventh-largest insurance provider, has an agreement in principle with several of the company's stakeholders. Details of the tentative agreement reached with two of three investor groups must still be resolved and approved by group members before a reorganization plan can be submitted for the court's approval, Lubbers said. A filing outlining specifics of the plan could be submitted within four to six weeks. Banks and bondholders who took part in the talks reached terms with Conseco, but holders of preferred securities did not, Lubbers said. Talks will continue with those investors, Lubbers said. The agreement with two creditor groups is critical to moving forward with the restructuring, Lubbers said. Sales of some Conseco assets are part of the tentative agreement, he said. Bondholders, who submitted a proposal in the talks to take full equity ownership of Conseco, are owed $2.5 billion in public debt. Banks are due $1.5 billion, with more than $2 billion owed to holders of preferred stock. Although the bankruptcy filing was not surprising given Conseco's recent woes, it marked a dramatic downfall for a company whose stock was once a Wall Street darling. From 1988 to 1998, the company's stock averaged a total return of 47 percent per year and Conseco shares traded as high as $58. Today, the stock trades at less than a nickel per share. Under the most commonly used measure to rank bankruptcies, Conseco's ranks third in the United States based on the $52.3 billion in assets the company and its subsidiaries reported as of Sept. 30. WorldCom's total assets at its July filing were $104 billion, followed by Enron's $64 billion. Before Conseco's filing, the third-largest bankruptcy was the 1987 filing by Texaco, which had nearly $36 billion in assets at the time. Adjusted for inflation, that amount would be more than $56 billion today, according to the research Web site BankruptcyData.com. Conseco maintains the use of assets to measure bankruptcies is inappropriate in its case because its insurance operations are not included in the bankruptcy filing. Also, Conseco says its debt entering bankruptcy is much smaller than several other companies' debts at the time they filed. The filing follows a yearslong tailspin after the conglomerate's aggressive acquisition strategy in the 1990s backfired. Company founder Stephen Hilbert was ousted in April 2000 after piling up $8.2 billion in debt. Federal regulators are investigating the company's accounting around the time of Hilbert's resignation and his replacement by Gary Wendt. The decline in Conseco's financial condition accelerated in recent months, leading to Wendt's Oct. 3 resignation. He had received a $45 million signing bonus when he was hired. Wendt, who remained board chairman, said as recently as May 1 that Conseco's short-term debt problems were behind it, and that he was confident about next year's prospects. Those statements and other reassurances from Conseco executives led to the filing of a string of recent shareholder lawsuits. Conseco has also suffered a series of downgrades by Wall Street credit rating agencies. Those downgrades, combined with bankruptcy fears, have hurt the ability of Conseco's insurance and finance subsidiaries to keep existing customers and attract new ones. Company officials have said Conseco's insurance subsidiaries have remained fundamentally sound despite the parent company's debt problems. However, the finance division, Conseco Finance, is insolvent after failing to make a $4.7 million payment due Dec. 4. The filing covers Conseco Inc., the parent company, as well as St. Paul, Minn.-based Conseco Finance Corp. and its consumer finance subsidiaries. Conseco's insurance operations are not included in the filing, Lubbers said. Conseco is based in the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6347-2002Dec18.html List of the 12 Largest U.S. Bankruptcies The top 12 U.S. bankruptcies, ranked by assets:P#150; WorldCom Inc., July 21, 2002; $103.9 billionP#150; Enron Corp., Dec. 2, 2001; $63.4 billionP#150; Conseco Inc., Dec. 18, 2002; $52 billionP#150; Texaco Inc., April 12, 1987; $35.9 billionP#150; Financial Corp. of America, Sept. 9, 1988; $33.9 billionP#150; Global Crossing Ltd., Jan. 28, 2002; $25.5 billionP#150; UAL Corp., Dec. 9, 2002; $25.2 billionP#150; Adelphia, June 25, 2002; $24.4 billionP#150; Pacific Gas and Electric Co., April 6, 2001; $21.5 billionP#150; MCorp., March 31, 1989; $20.2 billionP#150; Kmart Corp. Jan. 22, 2002, $17.0 billionP#150; NTL Inc., May 8, 2002, 16.8 billionP#150;#150;#150;PSource: Bankruptcy Data.com, Securities and Exchange Commision filings A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis 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://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;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] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com Here's the old father - daughter thing again. Shrub and his coupla six packers; John Ellis and his renegade; now, one of the white male Supremes. Ain't no behaviour low enough ... AER To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42681-2002Dec11.html GAO Widens Inquiry of Rehnquist By Edward Walsh The General Accounting Office has expanded its investigation of Health and Human Services Inspector General Janet Rehnquist, the daughter of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, beyond its initial focus on widespread personnel changes in her office. According to congressional investigators, the GAO is now also looking into allegations involving the delay in an audit of a Florida pension fund that could have benefited Gov. Jeb Bush (R), the unauthorized possession of a gun by Rehnquist and the shredding of documents after the GAO inquiry had begun. Ben St. John, a spokesman for Rehnquist, confirmed that these additional elements have become part of the GAO inquiry, which he said HHS officials do not consider an investigation but a management review. The GAO is the investigative arm of Congress. Rehnquist, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Alexandria who worked in the White House under then-President George H.W. Bush, supervises a staff of about 1,600, the largest Office of Inspector General (OIG) at any federal agency. One of the office's main tasks is to investigate allegations of fraud and waste in the huge Medicare and Medicaid health insurance programs that are administered by HHS. The GAO first began looking at the operations of Rehnquist's office in October in response to a request from Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and John Breaux (D-La.). In a letter to top GAO officials, the three senators said they were concerned about the impact of the loss or reassignment of several senior managers on OIG operations. In a separate statement, Grassley said that, since Rehnquist was confirmed in August 2001, there had been 19 senior staff changes in the office, including the retirement, resignation or reassignment of six deputy inspectors general, most of whom had at least 30 years experience at the agency. I want the GAO to determine whether the loss or transfer of these key people will erode this office's performance, Grassley said at the time. Since that initial request, the GAO inquiry has branched out into other areas, including an almost six-month delay earlier this year in beginning an audit of a Florida state government pension fund at a time that Gov. Bush, President Bush's brother, was facing a tough reelection battle. The audit, scheduled to begin in April, did not start until September, ensuring that any potentially embarrassing results would not be known until well after the Nov. 5 election in which Bush eventually won a second term. St. John said the audit was delayed at least three times at the request of Florida officials. He said that at least the first request, seeking a delay because the pension fund was about to get a new director, came from Gov . Bush's office and was referred to Rehnquist. But St. John said that the delays were not linked to Florida politics, and that the outcome of the audit would not have been known until after the election even if the audit had started in April. A congressional investigator disputed that assertion, saying that interviews with people in Florida indicated that the audit would have been done before Nov. 5. June Gibbs Brown, Rehnquist's predecessor at HHS who served as IG at four federal agencies, said in an interview that requests to delay an audit are unusual and rarely reach the head of the IG office. Late yesterday, Rehnquist released internal documents on the audit decision and a letter to Grassley in which she said my decision to delay the audit was based on the merits and not motivated by political reasons. According to an internal e-mail message that Rehnquist released, before the audit was delayed, OIG officials expected a draft report on the audit by Sept. 30, more than a month before the election. Rehnquist confirmed yesterday that the delay request came from Kathleen Shanahan, Jeb Bush's chief of staff. Rehnquist said her staff advised her that it was a reasonable request. Congressional investigators said they have also determined that Rehnquist, who apparently has become a shooting enthusiast but is not licensed to own a gun, had an unloaded handgun in her office for a short time. St. John said he knew nothing about a handgun, but confirmed that Rehnquist at one point had a laser gun in her office that she used to practice aiming at a poster of a human figure. A laser gun does not shoot bullets, but aims a beam of light. Another source said Rehnquist
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com A question arises as to when nations exceed their legal authority and become pirates. To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40649-2002Dec11.html U.S. Releases Missile Shipment to Yemen By Ahmed Al-HajSAN'A, Yemen #150;#150; The U.S. Navy released the shipment of North Korean-made Scud missiles it seized, sending the vessel and its cargo on their way Wednesday to the original destination of Yemen.PWhite House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the United States had authority to stop and search the vessel, but not to seize it.PThere is no clear authority to seize the shipment, Fleischer told a news conference in Washington. The merchant vessel is being released.PYemeni Foreign Ministry officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press the decision followed high-level contact between Yemen and the United States.PThe official Saba news agency said the United States had assured Yemen that the shipment would be released as long as the Yemen-North Korea deal was concluded on legal basis.PVice President Dick Cheney told Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh that President Bush ordered the shipment to be returned, Saba reported. Fleischer said Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell had talked with Yemeni authorities.PThe Spanish navy had stopped the ship Monday off the Arabian peninsula, and U.S. authorities boarded it on Tuesday. The action came after intelligence officials watched the ship for weeks as part of an interdiction operation in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.PSpanish Defense Minister Federico Trillo said Wednesday the unflagged vessel was carrying 15 Scud missiles hidden in a cargo of cement.PWe became aware of the departure of the ship from North Korea that was carrying what we believe to be weapons of concern, Fleischer said. This was a non-flagged vessel, which gave us further concern. And the vessel was destined for Yemen.PWe had a concern about what was on it. We had a concern before ascertaining, indeed, that it was going to Yemen, that it may have been heading for a nation that is a potential terrorist nation.PAs a result, the action that was taken, where the ship was stopped and boarded, Fleischer continued. We have looked at this rnational law prohibiting Yemen from accepting delivery of missiles from North Korea.PThe Bush administration in August imposed sanctions on the North Korean company Changgwang Sinyong Corp. for selling Scud missile parts to Yemen. At that time, U.S. authorities asked Yemen why it bought the parts; San'a apologized and promised not to do so again, two defense officials said Wednesday in Washington.PUnder the U.S. sanctions, Changgwang Sinyong Corp. will be barred for two years from obtaining new individual export licenses through the Commerce or State departments for any controlled items. The sanctions have little practical effect, one official said, because there is so little commerce between the United States and North Korea.PBefore the ship was freed, Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Kerbi summoned U.S. Ambassador Edmund J. Hull to tell him the arms shipment was a property of the Yemeni government and its armed forces and demanded that the United States should hand the shipment over to Yemen, Saba reported.PThe weapons contained in the shipment were to be used for defensive purposes as Yemen has no aggressive intentions toward any country, and owning such weapons would not harm the international peace and security, Saba quoted the official protest handed to Hull.PYemeni officials had refused further details about the deal, including from what threat the Scud missiles were designed as a defense.PThe Saba agency said the memo given to Hull claimed the shipment was part of a long-standing deal with North Korea. A senior Yemeni official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the Americans knew of the deal.PTrillo, Spain's Defense Minister, said the U.S. Navy had been planning to take the ship to Diego Garcia island, a British island leased to the United States as a military base.PSpain's role in the shipment's seizure earned the country a Yemeni protest memorandum as well in which San'a said the Spanish navy didn't serve (to improve) relations betw was silent Wednesday about the interception of the ship, but said it had the right to develop weapons to defend itself.PIt is necessary to heighten vigilance against the U.S. strategy for world supremacy and 'anti-terrorism war,' the North's official newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said in an editorial.PAll the countries are called upon to build self-reliant military power by their own efforts, the newspaper said. It was unclear whether the editorial was a response to the interception, as North Korea usually takes several
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32361-2002Dec9.html Dorgan Urges Gore to Give Up on Presidency By Dan Balz As Al Gore contemplates another run for president, Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) has some crisp advice: Don't do it again. Al Gore is a fine person, and I like him, Dorgan said in an interview. My feeling is that our party must turn the page. Dorgan, burned by the way Gore and the national Democratic Party ran the 2000 presidential campaign, sent the former vice president a three-page letter in April outlining his complaints. He blamed Gore for issuing an I give up message in North Dakota and many other states long before the campaign was over. It's one thing to try and fail, Dorgan said in the letter. But I think it is unforgivable to fail to try. . . . I want a presidential candidate who will give us a fighting chance in the heartland states. Dorgan said over the weekend that his views haven't changed. Vice President Gore is pretty much a known commodity, he said. My own view is that, at this point, I hope he will make a decision not to seek the presidency. Dorgan's letter carries an inherent warning to other Democrats thinking of running in 2004. Democratic candidates in Republican-leaning states need financial and rhetorical support from the party's presidential nominee and national organization to avoid what happened in North Dakota in 2000, which was a Republican sweep. Dorgan isn't the only Democratic elected official sounding off about Gore lately. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said last week he thinks Gore should not run. Gore would lose, Frank told the Boston Herald, adding that the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, had made Bush much more popular. Al's been wounded, Frank said. It's not his fault and it's unfair, but it's reality. Gore has said he will announce a decision shortly after the holidays. Senate Democrats Prime for '04 Senate Democrats yesterday tapped Sens. Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan -- whose contacts stretch from Wall Street to auto unions -- to lead the party's effort take back control of the Senate in 2004. Corzine, a former chairman of the Goldman Sachs investment firm who made history by spending $60 million to win his seat two years ago, will be in charge of candidate recruitment and fundraising as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Fellow first-termer Stabenow, who was regarded as a skillful dollar-stretcher in a campaign boosted by strong union support, will be vice chairman. Although Democrats lost their Senate majority in last month's elections, Sen. Mary Landrieu's reelection in Saturday's hotly contested runoff in Louisiana has lifted their spirits. We have bounce in our step this morning, said Senate Democratic leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) in announcing the appointments. We will do well because we have the right issues, said Corzine, stressing the need for firm support for homeland security and a forceful assertion of economic priorities. An aide to Corzine said he will try to broaden the base of campaign fundraising in response to restrictions on large contributions in the new campaign finance law. Barbour Readies for Race It's all but official, it seems. Former Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour has filed paperwork needed to begin raising money for his planned 2003 campaign for Mississippi governor. Barbour hasn't formally announced his candidacy, but he has been traveling the state and criticizing Gov. Ronnie Musgrove (D), who hopes for a second term. Barbour was the state's 1982 GOP nominee for the Senate. He lost that race but went on to serve in the Reagan White House, head the RNC and found a Washington lobbying firm. Staff writer Helen Dewar and researcher Brian Faler contributed to this report. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis 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://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com I was assigned to Keesler AFB, MS, for a short time in the late 1980ies. What was interesting to see ... in full view of those who were bound to support and efend the Constitution ... was the degree to which Biloxi and other cities on the Gulf were non-integrated. They had those of non-Eueopean descent but they were bussing tables and washing dishes. Ain't none dem suprises heah-abouts! To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34186-2002Dec10.html Why So Late on Lott? By Howard Kurtz Trent Lott must go! That, at least, is the consensus of online pundits. What, you weren't aware that the Senate majority leader was in hot water for appearing to embrace the segregationist cause? Perhaps that's because, until this morning, most major newspapers hadn't done squat on the story. Which is hard to understand for this reason: There were cameras rolling. It's on tape. It was on C-SPAN, for crying out loud. If a Democrat had made this kind of inflammatory comment, it would be the buzz of talk radio and the Wall Street Journal editorial page would be calling for tarring and feathering. But Lott seems to be getting something of a pass. When Lott finally apologized yesterday, the big papers jumped on the story. But why did they wait so long? The setting, for those of you who missed The Washington Post report last Saturday, was a 100th birthday celebration for Strom Thurmond. Everyone was saying nice things about ol' Strom. The Mississippi senator offered this praise: I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either. Whoa! For those who are unfamiliar with the 1948 election, Thurmond, as governor of South Carolina, ran for the White House in what was dubbed the Dixiecrat Party, which stood for segregation of the races. All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches, Thurmond said during his campaign against Harry Truman and Thomas Dewey in which he won four states. So all these problems wouldn't have occurred if Strom and his segregationist pals had won? That is a breath-taking statement. Now maybe Lott got carried away during a light moment. Maybe he simply misspoke. But he was mighty slow to apologize for his comments. Few in the mainstream media seem to care. The incident did come up on Meet the Press, where Robert Novak said: I think it was a mistake. I don't think he was at all serious, and I don't even think we should dwell on it. To which Time's Joe Klein responded: If a Democrat had made an analogous statement, like if Henry Wallace had been elected in 1948, we would have had a much easier road with the Soviet Union because we would have just given them everything and there wouldn't have been a Cold War. You would have been jumping up and down. And I think that this kind of statement in this country at this time is outrageous, and it should be called that. Novak wouldn't budge: I mean, this is the kind of thing that makes people infuriated with the media, is they pick up something that's said at a birthday party and turn it into a case of whether he should be impeached. On CNN, ex-Clintonite James Carville said: To his credit, Strom Thurmond grew in wisdom and changed his views. It sounds like the same can't be said for other folks, Trent Lott, who has ties to a segregation-based organization. But if the establishment press is largely yawning, the situation is very different online. Andrew Sullivan pulls no punches: After his disgusting remarks at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party, it seems to me that the Republican Party has a simple choice. Either they get rid of Lott as majority leader; or they should come out formally as a party that regrets desegregation and civil rights for African-Americans. Why are the Republican commentators so silent about this? And the liberals? And where's the New York Times? Howell Raines is so intent on finding Bull Connor in a tony golf club that when Bull Connor emerges as the soul of the Republican Senate Majority Leader, he doesn't notice it. And where's the president? It seems to me an explicit repudiation of Lott's bigotry is a no-brainer for a 'compassionate conservative.' Or simply a decent person, for that matter. This isn't the first piece of evidence that Lott is an unreconstructed racist. He has spoken before gussied-up white supremacist groups before. So here's a simple test for Republicans and conservative pundits. Will they call Lott on this excrescence? Or are they exactly what some on the Left accuse them of?
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21113-2002Dec6.html Back, But Not By Popular Demand By David Greenberg This fall the Democrats came in for some ribbing over the weakness of their bench. When the party suddenly had to field last-minute replacements in crucial Senate races, it exhumed Greatest Generation septuagenarians Frank Lautenberg and Walter Mondale instead of tapping young comers. Now, surveying the presidential aspirants for 2004, some mentioners are eyeing a contender from two decades ago, the newly minted elder statesman Gary Hart. Who says there are no second acts in American life? But if the Democrats' resuscitation of their Pleistocene leadership shows a lack of imagination, the Republicans' recent revival of their own dinosaurs betrays something far more troubling: a hostility to dissent and an eagerness to exercise power that are dismayingly redolent of the heavies they seek to resurrect. Two weeks ago, President Bush placed Henry Kissinger, a veteran of the Nixonian era of secrecy, White House intrigue and dubious foreign ventures, in charge of uncovering intelligence and security flaws preceding the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Then last week, the president gave the National Security Council's top Middle East job to Iran-contra rogue Elliott Abrams. Meanwhile, outrage has belatedly fastened on February's naming of another Iran-contrarian, the pipe-puffing John Poindexter, to run a Big Brother-like Pentagon operation called Total Information Awareness that promises -- if news reports can be believed -- to harvest all known information about everybody into a searchable Internet database. Perhaps we'll see Poindexter and Abrams convene a reunion within the administration, where they can relive their heyday with other contra war alumni who are serving in the administration. You might think that a few of these folks would have had their careers ended by their misdeeds. And you might think that being tough on crime, long a GOP mantra, begins at home. You'd be wrong: On the matter of these men's sordid pasts, the Bush administration has shown an indulgence and permissiveness that would make Dr. Spock blanch. (If a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who's been indicted.) As a result, these vintage villains are not on parole but on parade. It's an '80s nostalgia party, as thrown by Ed Meese. In one sense, these appointments shouldn't be shocking, since Iran-contra has now -- strange to tell -- receded into history. Many of today's White House correspondents weren't old enough to drink beer when Poindexter, as national security adviser, led up the illegal Iran-contra scheme or when Abrams, as a State Department official, abetted the efforts. These journalists are not likely to hype the story. Indeed, even devoted political junkies might be hard-pressed to tell you exactly what Poindexter and Abrams did wrong. (The answer: Poindexter supervised the secret arms-for-hostages sales to Iran that violated Ronald Reagan's professed policies and possibly also the Arms Export Control Act. He green-lighted the funneling of profits from those sales to the Nicaraguan contras, in knowing defiance of a law barring government funding of those rebels. And he concealed his activities, destroyed evidence and lied to Congress. Abrams also misled Congress about the scheme.) The public's natural forgetfulness was assisted by the work of Republican judges and higher-ups. Poindexter was convicted by a federal jury for lying and obstruction of justice. Though sentenced to prison, he escaped hard time thanks to conservative appellate judges Laurence Silberman and David Sentelle (later of Lewinsky affair fame), who overturned his conviction; they ruled that independent counsel Lawrence Walsh had relied too much on testimony that the NSC adviser himself gave while under congressional immunity. Abrams won his Get Out of Jail Free card from an even higher authority. Convicted on two counts of lying to Congress, he avoided even probation and community service when, as a lame duck, President Bush senior gave Abrams and five others Christmas Eve pardons that ensured that no more information would surface. Bush's pardons helped give Iran-contra its final burial. Unlike Watergate, which has remained the benchmark for political wrongdoing for 30 years even as people forget its byzantine details, the Reagan scandals have lately grown dim -- occluded, partly, by the recent wash of gauzy tributes to the senescent former president in his twilight years. In their own time, of course, the Watergate felons staged comebacks, too. John Ehrlichman reinvented himself as a pulp novelist, G. Gordon Liddy as a radio talk-show host and Chuck Colson as
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15898-2002Dec5.html America Online Cuts To Include Va. Jobs By David A. Vise AOL Time Warner Inc.'s Internet unit is planning to slash at least $100 million in operating expenses, including hundreds of jobs at its Northern Virginia headquarters, because of a sharp drop in advertising revenue and changes in business strategy, sources said yesterday. The cost-cutting is aimed at bringing costs in line with a projected plunge of 50 percent in ad revenue next year. America Online Vice Chairman Joseph A. Ripp, who is overseeing the spending cuts, told managers that no division of Internet service provider will be immune from a detailed review of its operating expenses, sources said. Decisions about where to make the cuts will be made over the next few months, sources said. America Online employs more than 5,500 people in Northern Virginia. Employees in New York, California and Ohio also may lose their jobs. The company also hopes to save money by cutting computer network expenses. Chairman and chief executive Jonathan F. Miller told Wall Street analysts this week that 2003 will be a transition year for the online unit, with double-digit revenue growth returning in 2004. The spending cuts are part of a broader effort by AOL Time Warner to restore credibility on Wall Street, where its stock and reputation have been battered by a failure to deliver promised financial results, and by federal investigations into misleading accounting practices before and after America Online Inc.'s merger with Time Warner Inc. in January 2001. After an internal review this fall, AOL Time Warner reduced previously reported revenue by $190 million and said it cannot predict what additional charges may result from investigations by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission. AOL, the nation's biggest online service, provides 35 million subscribers with access to the Internet, online communications tools and content. Most subscribers pay $23.95 a month to access America Online with dial-up connections. To hold onto its subscribers amid heightened competition, the company plans to aggressively begin marketing a $14.95 a month service for AOL subscribers who want to retain access to America Online's e-mail and content but obtain high-speed connections from other providers. On Tuesday, AOL disclosed its dire ad-revenue projection while presenting a new business strategy to Wall Street analysts and investors. AOL Time Warner stock dropped more than 15 percent before recovering slightly yesterday, when it closed at $14 a share, up 16 cents. America Online's new business strategy is to get more money from current subscribers rather than counting on growth in advertising revenue or in the number of users. To do that, AOL plans to introduce and charge for various premium services, including a voice-mail service that will read e-mail to subscribers. It also intends to offer exclusive content from Time Warner's music and magazine properties, and an online version of CNN for broadband users. Wall Street is not convinced that AOL can achieve its goals. The strategic direction to address the challenges is sensible, but near-term impact is limited and our concern that the continued decline in the AOL division would be severe enough to offset the strength of other Time Warner businesses is now a reality, said a new research report by Goldman Sachs Co. The report, which concluded that cash-flow growth may not return to AOL before 2005, said the odds of poor execution are quite high, given that America Online is trying to achieve the conflicting goals of growth and cost-cutting simultaneously. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis 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://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To
Re: [CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- In a message dated 12/5/2002 7:03:51 PM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: By Ceci Connolly As physical specimens, the Baylor University students were fit and healthy, the "crème de la crème," in the words of researcher Kathy Edwards. Yet when she inoculated them with smallpox vaccine, arms swelled, temperatures spiked and panic spread. It was the same at clinics in Iowa, Tennessee and California. Of 200 young adults who received the vaccine as part of a recent government study, one-third missed at least one day of work or school, 75 had high fevers, and several were put on antibiotics because physicians worried that their blisters signaled a bacterial infection. This is indeed alarming. I'm one of the "older" folks who was innoculated for smallpox at the age of six prior to first grade in public school. At that time every first grader was required to be innoculated. We had no adverse reactions that I know of. The worst thing that I heard of happening at the time was someone who managed to scratch the spot of the vaccination and then touch an open scratch on his or her (I don't remember) face. It resulted in a vaccination scar on the face. Of course our medical experts and our producers of vaccines were obviously vastly superior to whatever friends of those in power are handling this work today. Innoculations in those days did not threaten the health or life of those who received them. Neither did they reduce our children to autism or require the Government to protect the vaccine producers by passing special legislation. It's hard to decide just what happened. Was it profit or progress? Us old fogies have such a hard time figuring that sort of thing out. Prudy A HREF=""www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis 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://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=""Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ 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] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com Why let UbL or Hussein or anyone else terrorise you? When Georgie can do it so much better? The pResident Who Loved Me is serenaded with Nobody Does It Better ... AER To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11192-2002Dec4.html Smallpox Vaccine Reactions Jolt Experts By Ceci Connolly As physical specimens, the Baylor University students were fit and healthy, the crème de la crème, in the words of researcher Kathy Edwards. Yet when she inoculated them with smallpox vaccine, arms swelled, temperatures spiked and panic spread. It was the same at clinics in Iowa, Tennessee and California. Of 200 young adults who received the vaccine as part of a recent government study, one-third missed at least one day of work or school, 75 had high fevers, and several were put on antibiotics because physicians worried that their blisters signaled a bacterial infection. Even for experts such as Edwards, the Vanderbilt University physician overseeing the study, the side effects were startling. I can read all day about it, but seeing it is quite impressive, she said. The reactions we saw were really quite remarkable. President Bush is poised to announce plans, perhaps as early as this week, to resume vaccinating Americans against smallpox as part of a massive push to protect the nation from a biological assault. As he weighs the decision, researchers are becoming reacquainted with the unpleasant -- often severe -- complications of the vaccine. The experiences in a half-dozen clinical trials offer an early look at what military personnel, hospital workers and other emergency workers will likely encounter if Bush adopts the recommendations of his top health advisers to vaccinate as many as 11 million people in the coming months. What is disconcerting, say the people participating in the clinical trials, is that when it comes to smallpox vaccination, what had once been considered ordinary is rather extraordinary by today's standards. I just wanted to go to bed for a day or two there, said Alison Francis, a New York University graduate student who received the vaccine. Francis, 24, said she felt tired and achy after getting her shot. Her arm was heavy, warm to the touch and terribly itchy. I thought, 'Can you just chop off my arm?' Participating in the study was part patriotism and part selfishness, she said. Now I'm protected. Once among the deadliest scourges on earth, smallpox was declared eradicated worldwide in 1981. But growing hostilities with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and others have renewed fears that the virus could be used as a potent, stealthy weapon. Vaccination is surefire protection against the disease, but it is risky. For every 1 million vaccinated, between 15 and 52 people will suffer life-threatening consequences such as brain inflammation, and one or two will die, according to historical data. Pregnant women, babies, people with eczema or weakened immune systems should not receive the vaccine. Federal health officials have proposed resuming vaccination in stages, beginning with as many as 500,000 hospital workers most likely to see an initial case. Later, as many as 10 million police, fire and medical personnel would be offered the vaccine. The Pentagon hopes to vaccinate 500,000 soldiers. Over the past year, federal researchers have been testing the 40-year-old vaccine for its safety and potency. None of the 1,500 volunteers has died or been seriously injured by the vaccine. But even the most mundane cases can be disturbing to doctors and patients unaccustomed to the live virus used in the vaccine and its side effects. Unlike most modern vaccines, the smallpox vaccine is administered by 15 quick pricks that establish an infection in your skin, said Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. There is the immediate discomfort of getting poked in the arm and a range of annoying reactions. Within three to four days, a red itchy bump develops, followed by a larger blister filled with pus. In the second week, the blister dries and turns into a scab that usually falls off in the third week. During the three weeks, many people experience flu-like symptoms -- aches, fever, lethargy -- and terrible itchiness. You can't scratch it; it's all bandaged up; all I could do was smack it, said Meg Gifford, a University of Maryland junior who participated in one study. For a weekend, she was pretty miserable, suffering from a slight fever, an arm that was hot to the touch and swollen lymph nodes in her armpit. At the University of Rochester Medical Center, researcher John Treanor saw a wide range of reactions, from a small rash to swelling the size of a grapefruit. About 5 percent of the 170
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com Read the last line To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A682-2002Dec2.html Taking the Iraq Policy for a Circular Spin By Dana Milbank We're going around in circles, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said as Air Force One carried President Bush home from his recent trip to Europe. The spokesman was not talking about air-traffic delays. Rather, he was trying to explain how the president's current hope that Saddam Hussein will peaceably disarm is consistent with his earlier view that the Iraqi leader should be ousted. And Fleischer faced strong headwinds. With Britain's Tony Blair on April 6, Bush declared: I explained to the prime minister that the policy of my government is the removal of Saddam. Moments later, Bush added, Maybe I should be a little less direct and be a little more nuanced, and say we support regime change. Recently, though, Bush has sounded more dovish. I hope we don't have to go to war with Iraq, he told Czech TV on Nov. 18. I hope that Saddam Hussein does what he said he would do, and that is disarm. In speeches yesterday, Bush and Vice President Cheney again emphasized disarming Hussein and made no mention of regime change. The delicate phrasing is the result of a geopolitical Catch-22 the Bush administration faces as it confronts the Iraqi president. Bush and his aides are pretty much convinced that Iraq will never disarm with Hussein in power. But to oust him, the administration would like to have international support. And Bush can only get such support if he makes his goal the disarmament of Iraq, not the ouster of its leader. The administration therefore must embrace a new goal -- Iraq's peaceful disarmament -- that it regards as nearly impossible to achieve, so it can build support for its original goal of replacing Hussein. As Elizabeth Drew reported in the New York Review of Books, the administration acknowledged that the true goal of regime change had to be played down to satisfy the United Nations. That has led to the aerial maneuvers employed by Fleischer on Air Force One 10 days ago. Reporters, led by Time magazine's John Dickerson, prompted this in-flight exchange when they tried to clarify whether Bush's goal was disarmament or regime change: Q: I just have one quick question on Iraq. Since it's clear that President Putin wants the United States to stick to the U.N. resolution, but since the United States position is that, in order to disarm Saddam Hussein, he must be removed from office, did Putin discuss with the President the U.S. position that, in order to disarm him, we must remove him from office? FLEISCHER: The President's position is that Saddam Hussein needs to live up to the resolution and disarm. If he does not, he will be disarmed. So that's the President's position, to be clear about what the President is saying. Q: The President has never said that we want to remove Saddam Hussein from office? FLEISCHER: The President has said that he hopes that Saddam Hussein and Iraq will comply with the resolution. If they don't, we will disarm them. Q: In the press conference with Tony Blair, the President didn't say, We want to remove Saddam Hussein from office? FLEISCHER: The President's position is either he will disarm or we will remove him so Iraq is disarmed. Q: Did he or did he not say that he wants to remove Saddam Hussein, in that press conference with Tony Blair? I mean, is that his position or not? FLEISCHER: Look, this is an age-old issue and we've gone through this a month ago about can Saddam Hussein disarm. Q: No, but do we want to remove him from office or not? FLEISCHER: If he doesn't disarm, yes. Q: If he does disarm? FLEISCHER: If Iraq disarms and you have all the other products of the U.N. resolution obeyed and what President Bush called for in New York obeyed, then the regime will have effectively changed. Q: So then he could stay in office? FLEISCHER: I think we're very skeptical of Saddam Hussein has any intention of doing it that way. . . . Q: So the President has changed his mind on whether he wants to remove him from office? FLEISCHER: We're going around in circles on this. You know what the President's position is. . . . Q: No, I don't. Q: The President has often said that regime change is the policy of this administration, as it was the previous administration. FLEISCHER: That's correct. Q: The President has defined that in a press conference with Tony Blair as removing Saddam Hussein from office. You are now saying that's not the case? FLEISCHER: This is not very complicated. The objective is to disarm Saddam Hussein and have Saddam Hussein live up to everything that he committed to, that the President
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com This is, of course, Shrub, the front man for Hussein, Hussein who must the most freedom loving person in all of recorded history considering the number of times he's been attacked in the last almost 12 years. Shrub the Moron. To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23866-2002Nov21.html Bush's Gift to Putin By Masha Lipman MOSCOW -- President Bush has likened the Oct. 23 seizure of hostages in a Moscow theater to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. He couldn't have come up with a better present for his good friend Vladimir before their meeting in St. Petersburg. President Vladimir Putin, of course, will not admit that the terrorist attack was in any way related to the ferocious and bloody war the Russian army has waged on Chechnya for the past three years. This war, which Putin started in 1999 as a reasonable response to Chechen incursions, has turned into a tragic vicious circle. Chechen fighters' attacks on the occupying Russian forces month after month have been followed by Russian retaliation -- most of it directed at civilians, since it's much easier to carry out punitive operations against them than to go after guerrillas in the mountains. The Chechen civilians are routinely tortured and robbed. They are taken from their homes, to be released later -- if they are lucky -- in exchange for money paid by their relatives. This war has claimed the lives of about 4,500 Russian soldiers and 10,000-15,000 Chechens, and it has led to ever-growing hatred by the Chechen people for the occupiers. Those who seized more than 800 hostages in the Moscow theater were monstrous criminals. Yet to say that the people who seized the hostages were killers, like the people who carried out the attack on America, as Bush did this week, is to help Putin shed responsibility for the Chechen war, a war that has propelled him to popularity and whose practices he has never publicly regretted. The more you love freedom, Bush told Radio Free Europe, the more likely it is you'll be attacked. But the Chechen killers who seized the hostages did not do it because Russia is such a lover of freedom. Their unpardonable crime is directly related to the atrocities committed by the Russian army against the Chechen people. Some people are attempting to blame Vladimir, Bush said, but it is the terrorists that ought to be blamed for everything. In fact, those who blame Vladimir are liberal Russian media and a group of liberal politicians who are trying to find out how a gang of terrorists traveled across Russia and its capital and transported a whole arsenal of guns and explosives to the Moscow theater. They also seek to establish what caused the deaths of more than 120 people, of whom only a few died at the hands of the terrorists. Based on their own independent investigation, members of a liberal Duma faction blame those in charge of the operation for their disregard for human lives. Most of the casualties were caused by the bungled rescue operation after the storming of the theater. Those people died because of the lack of timely medical aid. Unconscious and unable to breathe, those men, women and children needed urgent measures to restore breathing. Instead, they were thrown into buses, which took them to hospitals -- in many cases too late for medical treatment. Doctors who agreed to talk to the press said that the number of casualties could have been much smaller had the medical part of the operation been organized properly. Although Bush's support is no doubt welcome, the Russian president has shown that he is quite capable of standing up for himself. And he is not squeamish about the rhetoric he picks to defend his cause. When a French reporter at the recent European summit in Brussels asked him an unfriendly question about the performance of the Russian army in Chechnya, Putin responded in a bizarre and ugly manner. He invited the reporter to come to Moscow to be circumcised, and in a threatening tone he promised to see to it that nothing would grow back afterward. Putin also has other defenders. The Russian consulate in Berlin sent a warning to Germany's ARD television because it deemed its coverage of the theater tragedy inappropriately critical of policymakers. The channel was warned that their journalists would find it hard to work in Moscow. As for the Russian media, those not directly controlled by the government did a good job of informing the public about the anti-terrorist operation and how human lives were lost. According to some sources, this resulted in the chief executive of a national channel being summoned to the Kremlin and threatened with the loss of his job. Meanwhile, to discourage the overly inquisitive press, the Russian legislature hurriedly
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25190-2002Nov22.html Taking Aim at Those Independent Thinkers By Howard KurtzpFrom one end of the political spectrum to the other, the resentment of third parties is suddenly boiling over./p pFor two years, hardcore Gore backers have barely been able to utter Ralph Nader's name without spitting in contempt. Nader's ego trip, in their view, denied Gore the presidency./p pNow it's the GOP's turn. A full-fledged spat has broken out between Republicans and Libertarians, with both sides trading insults on the opinion pages./p pThis promises to be fun./p pYou would think the Republicans would be feeling rather self-satisfied these days, having taken over every power center in D.C. except the Redskins. But they still feel they wuz robbed by a tiny party that can't win on its own./p pTo the uninitiated, libertarians are just faux Repubs, another branch of the feuding conservative family. But that fails to capture the leave-me-alone, pox-on-both-houses ethos of those who flock to the libertarian banner./p pThe debate goes to the heart of why independent movements exist. The major parties see the defectors as fuzzy-headed purists, modern-day Whigs who would rather indulge in protest politics than win power. The third-party enthusiasts see the Democrats and Republicans as K Street sellouts, doing the bidding of their corporate donors rather than heeding the wishes of The People. Not a dime's worth of difference and all that./p pWhile the third-party champions of the past decade #150; Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, Jesse Ventura #150; are fading, the movements still have the power to tip elections. Much to the dismay of National Review's John Miller:/p pIf there had been no Libertarian Senate candidates in recent years, Republicans would not have lost control of the chamber in 2001, and a filibuster-proof, 60-seat majority would likely be within reach, he declares in the New York Times./p pIt's important to appreciate that Libertarian voters are not merely Republicans with an eccentric streak. Libertarians tend to support gay rights and open borders; they tend to oppose the drug war and hawkish foreign policies. Some of them wouldn't vote if they didn't have the Libertarian option./p pBut Libertarians are also free-market devotees who are generally closer to Republicans than to the Democrats. . . . Yet Libertarians are now serving, in effect, as Democratic Party operatives./p pTake that!/p pThe A HREF=http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/929jsrld.asp;Weekly Standard/A's Rachel DiCarlo picks up the drumbeat, saying that in Sen. Tim Johnson's 524-vote victory over Republican John Thune in South Dakota, one factor undoubtedly helped Johnson's cause: Libertarian candidate Kurt Evans managed to garner 3,000 votes from South Dakota's tiny electorate (just 234,435 people voted in the race)./p pLibertarians also tipped the balance in favor of Democrats in some of the nation's excruciatingly close gubernatorial races this year. In Wisconsin, Democrat Jim Doyle can thank Libertarian Ed Thompson (brother of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson) for his victory. Thompson took in 185,000 votes, while Doyle's margin over incumbent Republican Scott McCallum was 68,000 votes./p pIn Oklahoma, where a proposed cock-fighting ban drove rural voters to the polls to support Democrat Brad Henry, who opposed the measure, Republican Steve Largent had a bigger problem to contend with: Independent candidate Gary Richardson, who ran on a Libertarian platform. Richardson collected an astounding 14.1 percent of the vote, to Henry's 43.3 percent and Largent's 42.6 percent. . . ./p pWhen accused of spoiling elections for Republicans, Libertarians take an attitude similar to Ralph Nader's Green party when they were accused of spoiling the presidential election for Democrats in 2000: They don't care./p pSays George Getz, the Libertarian National Committee's press secretary, 'You can't spoil tainted meat.'/p p/p pLet's go now to A HREF=http://reason.com/links/links111902.shtml;Reason/A, a libertarian magazine, for a response:/p pEven the Libertarian Party itself doesn't entirely deny pursuing the GOP-killer strategy that Miller decries,' writes Brian Doherty. 'But such spoiler complaints, whether from Democrats who think they should own the votes of Greens or Republicans who think free-market libertarians are their rightful vassals, ignore that there are good reasons why Greens or Libertarians should want to flee the major party fief. The candidates of the major parties, with their usual scrum for the center, just don't offer what the ideologically consistent want./p pIf GOP partisans really wonder why the LP is beginning to cost them
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23481-2002Nov21.html U.S. May Take Burma Off 'Major' Drug List By Glenn Kessler State Department officials are close to recommending Burma's removal from a list of major drug producers, allowing the Southeast Asian nation to press for significant counternarcotics funding, according to sources on Capitol Hill and people who have spoken with State Department officials. A decision by the Bush administration to reward Burma's counternarcotics efforts would be an important psychological boost for the repressive government, experts said. Burma's ruling military junta, which has been condemned for human rights abuses, has long sought to use its counterdrug efforts to gain greater international recognition. This would bring the regime a great deal of prestige, said David Steinberg, director of Asian studies at Georgetown University. A State Department recommendation would need to be reviewed by the White House, and officials at the bureaus involved in the recommendation refused to discuss the issue. But, in a speech last night, Assistant Secretary of State James A. Kelly pointed to Burmese efforts on drugs as one of the few bright spots in a most frustrating challenge for American diplomacy. Burmese cooperation with the international community on narcotics issues has continued to improve in real terms, Kelly said. Removing Burma from the list of major drug producers likely would prompt fierce complaints from members of Congress, such as incoming Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who favor keeping the pressure on the Burmese leadership. This would be a very controversial decision, one congressional staffer said. He said Burma continues to have an ongoing narcotics problem, while the Burmese government will view this as a broader blessing for their approach. Adding to congressional anger, a State Department investigation has corroborated reports over the summer that the Burmese military uses rape as a weapon of war against ethnic civilian areas on a widespread basis, a department official said yesterday. Kelly last night said the United States is pressing for an international investigation of the rape allegations. The administration has maintained economic and political sanctions on the Burmese government, despite the release this year of Burmese democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest. But Steinberg said he had detected a distinct shift in tone by the State Department this year, suggesting a greater willingness to move toward better relations with Burma. The Burmese government also hired a high-powered lobbying firm, DCI Associates, to press its case in Washington. The key lobbyist on the Burma account, Charles Francis, is a friend of President Bush. The State Department, in a report in March, said that Burma last year became the world's largest producer of illicit opium. Burma is also the primary source of amphetamine-type stimulants in Asia, producing an estimated 800 million tablets per year. But in testimony before a congressional committee in June, Deputy Assistant Secretary Matthew P. Daley appeared to lay out steps that the Burmese needed to take to win what is known as certification of its antidrug program, such as enforcing money-laundering laws and targeting high-level drug traffickers. He said it was possible to pursue better communication and cooperation with Burma [on drugs] without diminishing our support for political reform and national reconciliation. State Department officials appear to believe Burma has met the requirements laid out in Daley's testimony. But Bertil Lintner, an expert on the Burmese drug trade, said substantial evidence shows the government is linked to major drug traffickers, including joint ventures with the military and frequent meetings between traffickers and junta leaders. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis 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://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57037-2002Nov14.html Europeans Warn of Attacks By Peter Finn BERLIN, Nov. 14 -- Normally circumspect European intelligence and law enforcement officials have issued a wave of stark warnings in the last two weeks in an echo of U.S. fears that another terrorist attack may be on the way, including the possibility that al Qaeda could employ chemical or other weapons of mass destruction against European targets. The statements -- by officials in Britain, Germany and France, as well as by the head of Interpol, the international law enforcement agency -- represent a breadth of concern that the continent has not experienced since immediately after the attacks in New York and at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, that killed more than 3,000 people and galvanized international efforts to combat terrorism. Some European politicians, fearing public panic, have attempted to play down any clear and present danger. But the release Tuesday of a tape-recorded statement attributed to Osama bin Laden threatening Britain, France, Italy and Germany, as well as Canada and Australia, has compounded the sense of threat. There is very real concern, a German official said today. The surge in alerts from agencies and officials in different countries, he added, should be read as an expression of anxiety among European intelligence analysts that runs parallel to that expressed by U.S. intelligence agencies. The United States has issued numerous threat assessments since Sept. 11, 2001, a policy whose wisdom was quietly questioned in Europe because officials believed the information was too vague to warrant alarming the public. But the frank tone in Europe in recent days signals a concern that there is now sufficient intelligence to signal that danger may be gathering. The threat is higher today than yesterday and will be higher again tomorrow, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, France's leading anti-terrorism judge, said today in an interview with Europe 1 radio. The operational cells and networks are still working in Europe. . . . People in Europe, and especially in France, need to know that the risk is real and high. One German official said that intelligence and law enforcement agencies seem willing to buck the caution of their political superiors to get that message out. The starkest and most specific warning was issued by Hans-Josef Beth, head of Germany's international counter-terrorism unit. He told a meeting of the German-Atlantic Society in Berlin last week that Abu Musab Zarqawi, an al Qaeda leader trained in the use of toxins, could be planning an attack in Europe. Something big is in the air, said Beth, noting that Zarqawi has experience with poisonous chemicals and biological weapons. Zarqawi, a Jordanian, has been sentenced to death in his own country for planning bombings. He is believed to have traveled extensively since the Sept. 11 attacks, including in Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon and Turkey, European officials said. He is believed to have carried a poisonous substance disguised as an ointment into Turkey. This guy is very dangerous, especially with regard to the mixing of toxins and biological material, a senior German intelligence official said in a briefing for reporters. Intelligence officers fear that Zarqawi's movements may indicate he is attempting to prompt al Qaeda followers to travel to Europe for new attacks. We know people have come to Western Europe, the German intelligence official said. He said the information was based in part on interrogation of al Qaeda suspects captured in Arab countries after visiting Europe in recent months. We are in a stage where we have some facts, but we are lacking concrete details. Beth's comments were followed by a similar warning from his boss, August Hanning, head of Germany's federal intelligence service. We have to count on a new attack, an attack of a much larger dimension, Hanning said on the German public television station ZDF. There is a big threat, also in Germany. On the day Beth first spoke in Berlin, the British Home Office issued an alert that al Qaeda could employ a dirty bomb or launch a poison gas attack. The Home Office, or interior ministry, also warned that al Qaeda could use boats or trains to infiltrate cities. And the home secretary said Islamic terrorists, employing tactics seen recently in Tunisia, Pakistan and Indonesia, could carry out car bombings or assassinations. As we have seen with the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, the theater siege of Moscow, the attack on a French ship off Yemen, the scale of the attacks in Bali, today's breed of terrorist is looking for ever more dramatic and devastating effects, said a 35-page Home Office
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51497-2002Nov13.html The Two Nancy Pelosis By David Von Drehle and Hanna Rosin There are two Nancy Pelosis inside the smiling whirlwind that will become -- if all goes as planned today -- the first woman to lead her party in the House of Representatives. One is the liberal Democrat from San Francisco. (Remember that phrase: You're going to hear it a lot from Republicans over the next few years.) For 12 years, Nancy Pelosi has represented that city in the House, and her voting record has rarely disappointed her constituents. She votes in favor of partial birth abortion, against welfare reform and against the war in Iraq. And she rarely misses a Gay Pride parade. The other is the canny political tactician. This Pelosi raises and doles out more money than any other House member on behalf of her fellow Democrats. She whips votes with steel and cunning. She grew up as the only daughter of an old-fashioned urban ward boss and never forgot what her father taught her: that politics is a matter of winning votes, not spinning philosophies. Which one will dominate as House minority leader? Republicans are rooting for the first. Go, Nancy! GOP lobbyist Ed Rogers said, laughing. In no way does she help them become a national party. She's a liberal, San Francisco Democrat who has a host of positions that are anathema to Southern, middle-of-the-road voters. Pelosi promises the other. This is a stale question, she said yesterday, although she knows a lot of people are wondering. People who ask it don't understand what leadership is. . . . What's important is: Can you rally the troops? Do you have the knowledge to make the right judgments? Do you have a plan and the ability to attract enough supporters to make it happen? It isn't about your voting record. In the aftermath of President Bush's strong showing last week, many Democrats feel like they may need a ward-boss type in leadership, replacing Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.) For the first time in years, a senior party strategist said, the Republicans outdid us at what we used to be good at: the ground game, grass-roots organizing and voter turnout. And it is a measure of how the party -- and the world -- has changed that the old-fashioned pol the Democrats are turning to is a woman. But not just any woman. Nancy Pelosi, 62, is the daughter of the late Thomas Big Tommy D'Alesandro, an old-style Democrat who got Baltimore so well organized after World War II that he won three straight terms as mayor. It is possible that Big Tommy had an ideology. What's certain is that he had a machine. Pelosi's childhood home was stacked with bumper stickers and crowded with constituents, who were always welcome to drop by for canolis and a favor. Big Tommy would ask simply, What's your story? It worked well enough that his son, Little Tommy, won his own term as mayor. This grounding may not be immediately obvious to television viewers who see the rich and beautiful Pelosi flash across their screens. But it has reshaped the views of plenty of political insiders as they have gotten to know Big Tommy's daughter. In 1984, for example, when Pelosi made a fruitless bid to head the Democratic National Committee, a leader of the AFL-CIO allegedly called her an airhead. Now, outgoing AFL-CIO political director Steve Rosenthal prefers smart and astute. She's a technician, a nuts-and-bolts person, smart and astute enough to see that how she represents her district is one thing, and how she leads the Democratic Party in the House is another, Rosenthal said. He compared Pelosi to the late House Speaker Thomas Tip O'Neill (D-Mass.), a Boston liberal who managed to work well even with the super-conservative President Ronald Reagan. Her counterpart on the Republican side is Rep. Tom DeLay (Tex.). Both have served as party whip, and both are graduating to party leader. DeLay usually has nothing good to say about liberals, but he knows a good pol when he sees one. Pelosi, he has said, is a worthy opponent. Polished Personality On a personal level, there's something about Pelosi's scrubbed and polished personality that undercuts her association with Haight-Ashbury and the Castro. She is a graduate of Trinity College, a women's Catholic school in Washington; she married young and stayed married, had five children in six years and made a sacrament out of ironing. The third of her children, Jacqueline Kenneally, recalls seeing her mother at a town meeting in San Francisco surrounded by her shocking and wild constituency -- the transgendered group in one corner, the homeless activists in another -- and thinking Oh my god, what's my mom doing here? If they think she's some '60s hippie, liberal type,
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25599-2002Nov7.html New Indian Voters Turned Race in S.D. By T. R. Reid PINE RIDGE INDIAN RESERVATION, S.D., Nov. 7 -- You know, I was almost getting ticked off at the Democrats, said retail clerk Mavis Rullard as she carefully organized the seven flavors of beef jerky on sale at Cubby's, a tiny trading post on the vast khaki prairie that stretches out below the Badlands. They was in this store three or four times on Tuesday, saying, you know, 'Have you voted? Can we drive you there?' And I kept saying, you know, 'I'll vote when I get off work.' I mean, they went door to door all day, to get everybody over to the voting. In the end, Rullard did vote -- Democratic, of course -- and thousands of her fellow Lakota Indians did as well, responding to an unprecedented drive by South Dakota Democrats to beef up voter turnout on the state's reservations. Party leaders now say those new Democratic voters almost surely made the difference for incumbent Sen. Tim Johnson. He emerged from initial tallies Wednesday morning as the unofficial winner of one of the nation's tightest Senate races, with a 528-vote margin out of about 337,000 votes cast. The margin is small enough that his Republican opponent, Rep. John Thune -- who was recruited for the Senate race by President Bush -- has a legal right to call for a recount. Thune says he will wait and see what to do, but he indicated he will not challenge the result absent some indication of fraud or error in the tallies. State officials said today that there is no sign of wrongdoing involving the voting in heavily Indian counties here. Despite the noisy allegations of fraud and vote-stealing on the reservations that made a media splash a month ago, the balloting on Tuesday was evidently untarnished. The state's attorney general, Mark Barnett, who had called in the FBI to help investigate possible voter fraud on the reservations in October, moved to shoot down any suggestion that Johnson's win may have been tainted. I don't see any evidence that anybody stole an election from anybody else, said Barnett, a Republican. Barnett said his office is pursuing two cases of possible forgery on registration and absentee ballot forms, but added: I don't want the suggestion out there that there is widespread fraud when we don't have any evidence of that. Renee Dross, elections commissioner of Fall River County, who oversees voting and ballot-counting on the Pine Ridge reservation, said in an interview that we had a huge increase in the number of votes over there, but no problems to speak of. I think maybe too much was made last month of a few isolated cases. Going into this fall's campaigns, both major parties knew that South Dakota's two congressional races -- for the at-large House seat, and Johnson's Senate seat -- would be close. With relatively few contested seats elsewhere, one of the nation's least-populated states suddenly became the focus of national media and interest-group attention. So much money and manpower poured in that virtually every known voter was personally approached by one or both sides. With polls showing registered voters almost evenly divided, the Democrats went prospecting for a new source of votes -- and came up with a gusher on the state's Indian reservations. Here on the Pine Ridge reservation, nearly all the Oglala Lakota Indians are Democrats -- but not many of them vote. Turnout has generally run at 30 percent or lower, county records show. So this fall, the state Democratic Party launched a huge registration and turn-out drive. They came right into the classroom and signed us up, said Ohitika Tasso, 18, of Wounded Knee, a senior at Pine Ridge High School. And on Election Day, they sent a bus to the front door of the school and took a whole bunch of us over to the polling place. Tasso is certain that the new Indian registrants were reliable Democratic voters. It's just sort of basic knowledge around here that the Democrats do more for us, he says. The Republicans, they don't even put their signs up on the res. A month ago, it looked as if this unprecedented effort in Indian country might backfire on the Democrats. Two people being paid by the party to register Indian voters were charged with forging documents. The local and national media made much of the cases, suggesting that the fraud ran much wider. That put Democratic candidates on the defensive. Indian activists and Democratic leaders, in turn, charged that the fraud allegations amounted to a Republican ploy. The state's top Democrat, Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle, wondered out loud whether there isn't a political agenda at play here to intimidate people who
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32438-2002Oct28.html Priest's Support of Pedophilia Was Known BOSTON, Oct. 28 -- A former high official of the Catholic Church in Boston who is now the bishop of New York's Brooklyn Diocese knew the Rev. Paul R. Shanley endorsed sex between men and boys when he promoted Shanley two decades ago to head a Boston area parish, according to a sworn statement made public today. Bishop Thomas V. Daily of the Brooklyn Diocese was chancellor, vicar general and auxiliary bishop in the Boston Archdiocese at the time he promoted Shanley to administrator and acting pastor at St. Jean's parish in Newton. Shanley, 71, is one of the priests at the center of the church sex scandal. He was indicted in June on charges of raping or otherwise molesting boys while he was at St. Jean's from 1979 to 1989. In the deposition, Daily said he considered Shanley a troubled priest who needed help. He also said he knew Shanley had attended a meeting of the North American Man-Boy Love Association and had spoken in favor of the group. But Daily said he had not received any reports of Shanley engaging in abuse. Daily served in the Boston post from 1977 to 1984. He gave the testimony in August for lawsuits filed by three men who allege they were sexually abused by Shanley at St. Jean's. Daily said there was no indication Shanley was promoting sexual relationships between men and boys while he was at St. Jean's. But having said that, I would have very great regrets, Daily said. You have regrets you made the appointment? asked plaintiffs' lawyer Roderick MacLeish Jr. I think I would have done much better if I hadn't made the appointment, Daily replied. Frank DeRosa, a spokesman for the Brooklyn Diocese, had no immediate comment on the deposition today. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis 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://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http://archive.jab.org/ctrl;listserv.aol.com/ A HREF=http://archive.jab.org/ctrl;listserv.aol.com/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] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28438-2002Oct27.html Misleading the Nation About War I know something about defending a president who's been caught lying. Let me tell my friend Ari Fleischer that he's only making things worse for President Bush. After The Post reported on Mr. Bush's many fabrications regarding Iraq and homeland security, Mr. Fleischer sent a letter to the editor in which he refers to President Clinton's false denial of an affair as a crime that shook the nation [Oct. 24]. The lawyer in me is compelled to point out that President Clinton has never been charged with nor convicted of a crime. The same cannot be said of President George W. Bush who, of course, was convicted of drunken driving many years ago. To his shame, in the 2000 campaign Mr. Bush falsely denied ever having been convicted of a crime. The political veteran in me knows that lying about a long-past drunken driving conviction -- or an affair -- is understandable, if not excusable. What is not excusable is misleading the country -- repeatedly, as The Post and others have noted -- about going to war. There is something odd about a White House that thinks misleading people about sex is a crime, but misleading us about war is good public policy. PAUL E. BEGALA McLean The writer was counselor to President Clinton. In his letter, White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer wrote, True, the president stated that the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iraq could possess nuclear weapons in as few as six months. It was in fact the International Institute for Strategic Studies that issued the report. The source may be different, but the underlying fact remains the same, despite the story's declaration of the president's argument, once again, as 'dubious, if not wrong.' I find it curious that the report the White House now claims the president's original statement was based on was released Sept. 9, two days after President Bush made his statement. Even more curious, just like the original source that has been disavowed, the new source that the White House cites as the basis for the president's statement does not say that Iraq was six months away from developing a nuclear weapon. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies Web site: Iraq does not possess facilities to produce fissile material in sufficient amounts for nuclear weapons. It would require several years and extensive foreign assistance to build such fissile material production facilities. It could, however, assemble nuclear weapons within months if fissile material from foreign sources were obtained. It could divert domestic civil-use radioisotopes or seek to obtain foreign material for a crude radiological device. Based on that, the president's claim sure sounds dubious, if not wrong to me, and it's not exactly what is needed on an issue of this import. WILLIAM MURPHY Westminster A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis 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://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http://archive.jab.org/ctrl;listserv.aol.com/ A HREF=http://archive.jab.org/ctrl;listserv.aol.com/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] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com Now is this the Newt who was after Bill Jeff for dolly-dilly-dallying while placing some side bets of his own and supporting that other oxymoron (in two senses), LivingStone? AER To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31610-2002Oct28.html Gingrich Accusations Come Under Scrutiny By Terry M. Neal Leading the GOP charge against likely Minnesota senatorial candidate Walter Mondale, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich accused the former vice president Sunday of supporting Social Security privatization and raising the retirement eligibility age, but it appears the allegations are false. Gingrich, who now runs a political consulting firm in Washington, suggested during an appearance on Meet the Press that Mondale supported Social Security privatization and raising the retirement eligibility age. Mondale is the likely ballot replacement for Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash on Friday.Wellstone had made opposition to privatization or partial privatization of Social Security a major platform issue. Walter Mondale chaired a commission that was for the privatization of Social Security worldwide, Gingrich said. He chaired a commission that was for raising the retirement age dramatically. He has a strong record of voting to raise taxes. . . . think that what you'll see on the Republican side is an issue-oriented campaign that says, you know, if you want to raise your retirement age dramatically and privatize Social Security, Walter Mondale is a terrifically courageous guy to say that. Apparently, the commission he was referring to was one sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan think tank that seeks solutions to emerging global problems. CSIS's Commission on Global Aging, which issued the report last year, recommended raising retirement ages and converting social protection schemes from pay-as-you-go to market based financing in major industrialized countries around the globe as a way to deal with the crisis of depopulation and aging population crises. But Mondale, who served as the co-chairman of the commission, dissented from the majority position that supported raising retirement ages and privatizing government retirement programs. Mondale co-wrote the commission's dissent with six other Americans: Although we support the Commission's role in providing leadership in the global aging debate, we are strongly opposed to some of the Commission's findings and recommendations... Some of the Commission's findings and recommendations could be interpreted as mandates to fundamentally change Social Security and Medicare... Population trends should not be an excuse to renege on this commitment. Rather, we should rededicate ourselves to finding creative ways to meet the commitment, particularly because the United States does not face the same demographic challenges as other nations. The dissent continued: We do not support the Commission's findings and recommendations that might result in the dismantling of social insurance programs and their replacement with funded schemes. Funded systems are not immune to financial and demographic fluctuations, as the recent stock market performance clearly demonstrates. Funded systems should remain an important supplement to existing guarantees, but they should not replace those guarantees. Reached on his cell phone this afternoon, Gingrich's spokesman, Rick Taylor, said: I wasn't aware of the dissent. But I haven't had a chance to talk to the speaker about it. Taylor said he would seek an explanation and call back later. As of late Monday, Taylor had not called back With Election Day a little more than a week away, supporting privatization could be seen as a strong argument against Mondale given that it might damper enthusiasm from liberals - Wellstone's base. And, Gingrich was not the only one pursuing the line of attack on Sunday. Ramesh Ponnuru, a writer for the conservative National Review, said on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer: [Mondale] is a major advocate of President Bush's position on Social Security, which is something that I think, once it becomes more public, is going to alienate Wellstone Democrats. CSIS spokesman Paul Hewitt said of Mondale: He pointedly disagreed. He had his own point of view. Hans Reimer, senior policy analyst for the liberal Campaign for America's Future, was more forceful: Republicans are lying when then say Mondale supports privatization, just like they are lying when they claim to oppose it, he said. One high-ranking Republican, who asked to remain unnamed, defended the Gingrich assault, arguing that he got the gist of it right. He is associated with groups that have called for this, this person
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2-2002Oct26.html Bush's Efforts on Iraq, N. Korea Flag By Karen DeYoung and Mike Allen LOS CABOS, Mexico, Oct. 26 -- U.S. efforts to lead multilateral coalitions against Iraq and North Korea flagged today, as administration officials seemed increasingly resigned to the possibility of abandoning U.N. negotiations over Iraq, and Asian leaders meeting here with President Bush declined an offer to take a harsh stand against Pyongyang. A trilateral statement released after Bush met here with President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan declared that North Korea's recently revealed nuclear weapons program was a violation of several agreements, and called for it to be dismantled. But the statement did not include the condemnation of North Korea that senior Bush administration officials had said they were seeking. Instead, it said both Seoul and Tokyo would continue ongoing normalization talks with Pyongyang, during which they would raise the nuclear issue and warn that continuation of the nuclear program would jeopardize further improvement in relations. Bush, who arrived here this morning to attend the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, received much the same equivocal response when he hosted Chinese President Jiang Zemin at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., yesterday. On Iraq, White House officials including Bush began to express clear frustration with the lack of results after six weeks of U.N. negotiations. As I have said in speech after speech after speech, Bush said this morning after a meeting with Mexican President Vicente Fox, if the U.N. won't act, if Saddam Hussein won't disarm, we will lead a coalition to disarm him. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who said last week he was optimistic the U.N. Security Council was close to agreement on a tough, U.S.-proposed resolution on Iraq, said today, I don't want to say that we're near a solution because it may evade us. France and Russia have continued to reject the U.S. proposal as giving Washington too much leeway to declare Baghdad had failed to cooperate with inspections of its weapons of mass destruction programs and to launch a military attack. Paris and Moscow have now said they may put their own resolutions on the table, calling for slightly less intrusive inspections and insisting on further council consultations to determine a course of action if Iraq balks. Powell, who traveled here with Bush, said the coming week would be key in U.N. deliberations. We have reached the point where we have to make a few fundamental decisions -- and go forward, he said. We can't continue to have a debate that never ends. Powell said he had spoken by telephone this morning with the French, Russian and British foreign ministers, and met here briefly with his Chinese counterpart. Of those governments, all of which have the power to veto council resolutions, only Britain has sided with the United States. Bush made little headway this morning with Mexico, which currently holds one of the 10 rotating council seats. Speaking in Spanish, Fox told reporters that Mexico had listened to President Bush's proposal, and we are listening to others. We want a strong resolution that will quickly activate new inspections and that ensures Iraqi compliance. But Mexico, he said, wanted a resolution that was acceptable to all council members. Bush has little patience with ceremony and has always kept his visits to international gatherings as brief as possible. With other leaders not rushing to embrace his plans, he did not conceal his testiness today. The only time he spoke to reporters was during a photo session with Fox, and he glowered during Fox's windup and looked annoyed at the unruliness of the camera crews. The last straw was when a cell phone went off, which infuriates Bush, even when the violator is a member of his staff. In a breach of protocol, Bush cut off the translator before Fox's answers could be rendered in English, and the White House transcript ignored Fox's words, saying simply, Answered in Spanish. In addition to his comments about the U.N. resolution, Fox criticized U.S. restrictions on Mexican agricultural imports as well as subsidies to U.S. farmers. Even Powell showed little enthusiasm. We all agree that it is time to bring the remaining issues to a head for resolution, if possible, he said. If resolution is not possible, then let's come to that realization and move forward. A tough line, along with the threat of unilateral military action, has been part of the administration's U.N. negotiating strategy since Bush first announced last month that he would seek international support on
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16477-2002Oct25.html Million-Dollar Ad Blitzes Irk Democrats By Jason Thompson Democrats are crying foul over a barrage of negative ads sponsored by a Republican-leaning organization that is dropping big bucks into some of this year's tightest Senate races. Democratic candidates and party members in New Hampshire, Minnesota and Colorado have spoken out against Americans for Job Security, a Washington-area group classified as a nonpolitical trade association. The organization is sponsoring million-dollar TV ad blitzes in the campaign season's final weeks, yet the group's status as nonpolitical organization frees it from having to disclose the source of its money, which has raised the ire of Democrats locked in tough races. In Colorado, where the group is running ads in support of Republican Sen. Wayne Allard, Denver's Democratic district attorney, Bill Ritter, called a news conference yesterday to publicly criticize AJS for being a stealth political organization and to accuse it of undermining the political process. In New Hampshire, the Senate campaign of Gov. Jeanne Shaheen cried foul this week over an AJS-backed ad blitz in support of her Republican opponent, Rep. John E. Sununu,and claimed Sununu is indirectly responsible for the ads due to his close relationship with a consultant for the group. In Minnesota, AJS is running negative ads attacking the record of Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone, who is facing a strong challenge from Republican Norm Coleman. The Wellstone campaign says the group is a front set up to funnel money to Republican candidates. As far back as August, the state Democratic party chairman filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service requesting that AJS be reclassified as a political organization. American for Jobs Security president Michael Dubke dismisses the criticism and says candidates like Wellstone are trying to change the subject when they don't like what is being debated in a public arena. He confirmed that the organization keeps its financial backers secret but said the membership includes companies, individuals, associations. By incorporating itself as a trade organization instead of a political organization, AJS is not required by law to disclose its financial backers. Dubke is steadfast in refusing to name the group's membership list, despite the stepped-up criticism. We've made the decision we're going to take that hit, and that's fine, he told the Rocky Mountain News. Dubke said AJS was founded in 1997 as a trade association with an agenda in business issues, such as free enterprise issues, cutting taxes, foiling bureaucracy, education. He says ads like the anti-Wellstone campaign in Minnesota are absolutely not intended to influence the election but rather an attempt to bring up the issue of the trustworthiness of public officials. Campaign finance watchdog groups like Democracy 21 argue otherwise, saying it's dead wrong for an outside organization to spend large amounts of money in a campaign without disclosing where that money has originated. The Republican candidates being supported by the ads have far fewer criticisms. Sununu's campaign disavowed any direct association with AJS, saying the consultant in question by the Shaheen camp is indeed a family friend but is not, nor ever been, on the Sununu payroll. In Colorado, Allard campaign manager Dick Wadhams responded that Ritter's criticism was hypocritical since liberal special interest groups have funded anti-Allard attack ads without disclosing their donor base, while admitting little knowledge of AJS. I don't know anything about this group, he said. Shaheen Targeted in Ad Blitz (Rocky Mountain News, Oct. 25) No Donor Names Required or Given for Anti-Wellstone Ads (Minneapolis Star Tribune, Oct. 24) Shaheen Targeted in Ad Blitz (Concord Monitor, Oct. 24) It may be too early to tell how successful the last-minute AJS ad blitzes will be, but the Sununu, Coleman and Allard campaigns certainly won't refuse any help. All three are locked in toss-up races expected to go down to the wire. In New Hampshire, Sununu and Shaheen will face off Friday night for their second debate in five days with poll numbers showing the race is a statistical tie. A survey released Thursday by the American Research Group gives Sununu support of 48 percent of those polled and Shaheen 46 percent, with the remaining 6 percent undecided. Pollster Dick Bennett credited Shaheen's gain to a growing appeal among indpendent voters, and said the numbers started to move after an anti-Sununu television ad that portrayed him as a GOP loyalist begain airing. The previous ARG poll had Sununu holding an 8-point lead.
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4346-2002Oct23.html Powerful Attack Cripples Servers By Ted Bridis WASHINGTON Nine of the 13 computer servers that manage global Internet traffic were crippled by a powerful electronic attack this week, officials said. But most Internet users didn't notice because the attack only lasted an hour. Its origin was not known, and the FBI and White House were investigating. One official described Monday's attack as the most sophisticated and large-scale assault against these crucial computers in the history of the Internet. Seven of the 13 servers failed to respond to legitimate network traffic and two others failed intermittently during the attack, officials confirmed. The FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center was aware of the denial of service attack and is addressing this matter, spokesman Steven Berry said. Service was restored after experts enacted defensive measures and the attack suddenly stopped. The 13 computers are spread geographically across the globe as precaution against physical disasters and operated by U.S. government agencies, universities, corporations and private organizations. As best we can tell, no user noticed and the attack was dealt with and life goes on, said Louis Touton, vice president for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the Internet's key governing body. We were prepared, we responded quickly, said Brian O'Shaughnessy, a spokesman for VeriSign Inc., which operates two of the 13 computers in northern Virginia. Computer experts who manage some of the affected computers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were cooperating with the White House through its Office of Homeland Security and the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board. Richard Clarke, President Bush's top cyber-security adviser and head of the protection board, has warned for months that an attack against the Internet's 13 so-called root server computers could be greatly disruptive. These experts said the attack, which started about 4:45 p.m. EDT Monday, transmitted data to each targeted root server 30 to 40 times normal amounts. One said that just one additional failure would have disrupted e-mails and Web browsing across parts of the Internet. Monday's attack wasn't more disruptive because many Internet providers and large corporations and organizations routinely store, or cache, popular Web directory information for better performance. The Internet was designed to be able to take outages, but when you take the root servers out, you don't know how long you can work without them, said Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, a security organization based in Bethesda, Md. Although the Internet theoretically can operate with only a single root server, its performance would slow if more than four root servers failed for any appreciable length of time. In August 2000, four of the 13 root servers failed for a brief period because of a technical glitch. A more serious problem involving root servers occurred in July 1997 after experts transferred a garbled directory list to seven root servers and failed to correct the problem for four hours. Traffic on much of the Internet ground to a halt. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis 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://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http://archive.jab.org/ctrl;listserv.aol.com/ A HREF=http://archive.jab.org/ctrl;listserv.aol.com/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] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61903-2002Oct21.html For Bush, Facts Are Malleable By Dana Milbank President Bush, speaking to the nation this month about the need to challenge Saddam Hussein, warned that Iraq has a growing fleet of unmanned aircraft that could be used for missions targeting the United States. Last month, asked if there were new and conclusive evidence of Hussein's nuclear weapons capabilities, Bush cited a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency saying the Iraqis were six months away from developing a weapon. And last week, the president said objections by a labor union to having customs officials wear radiation detectors has the potential to delay the policy for a long period of time. All three assertions were powerful arguments for the actions Bush sought. And all three statements were dubious, if not wrong. Further information revealed that the aircraft lack the range to reach the United States; there was no such report by the IAEA; and the customs dispute over the detectors was resolved long ago. As Bush leads the nation toward a confrontation with Iraq and his party into battle in midterm elections, his rhetoric has taken some flights of fancy in recent weeks. Statements on subjects ranging from the economy to Iraq suggest that a president who won election underscoring Al Gore's knack for distortions and exaggerations has been guilty of a few himself. Presidential embroidery is, of course, a hoary tradition. Ronald Reagan was known for his apocryphal story about liberating a concentration camp. Bill Clinton fibbed famously and under oath about his personal indiscretions to keep a step ahead of Whitewater prosecutors. Richard M. Nixon had his Watergate denials, and Lyndon B. Johnson was often accused of stretching the truth to put the best face on the Vietnam War. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, too, played with the truth during the Gary Powers and Bay of Pigs episodes. Everybody makes mistakes when they open their mouths and we forgive them, Brookings Institution scholar Stephen Hess said. Some of Bush's overstatements appear to be off-the-cuff mistakes. But, Hess said, what worries me about some of these is they appear to be with foresight. This is about public policy in its grandest sense, about potential wars and who is our enemy, and a president has a special obligation to getting it right. The White House, while acknowledging that on one occasion the president was imprecise, said it stands by his words. The president's statements are well documented and supported by the facts, Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer said. We reject any allegation to the contrary. In stop after stop across the country, Bush has cited an impressive statistic in his bid to get Congress to approve terrorism insurance legislation. There's over $15 billion of construction projects which are on hold, which aren't going forward -- which means there's over 300,000 jobs that would be in place, or soon to be in place, that aren't in place, is how he put it last week in Michigan. But these are not government estimates. The $15 billion figure comes from the Real Estate Roundtable, a trade group that is leading the fight for the legislation and whose members have much to gain. After pleas earlier this year from the White House for hard evidence to make its case for terrorism insurance, the roundtable got the information from an unscientific survey of members, who were asked to provide figures with no documentation. The 300,000 jobs number, the White House said, was supplied by the carpenters' union. But a union official said the White House apparently extrapolated the number from a Transportation Department study of federal highway aid -- not private real estate -- that the union had previously cited. The president has also taken some liberties as he argues for his version of homeland security legislation. He often suggests in stump speeches that the union covering customs workers is blocking the wearing of radiation detectors. The leadership of that particular group of people said, 'No way; we need to have a collective bargaining session over whether or not our people should be made to wear these devices,' he said in Michigan last week. And that could take a long period of time. The National Treasury Employees Union did indeed argue in January that the radiation devices should be voluntary, and it called for negotiations. But five days later, the Customs Service said it saw no need to negotiate and would begin to implement the policy, which it did. After a subsequent exchange between the union president and Customs Service commissioner, the union wrote in April that it does not object to mandatory wearing of the
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@UFFDAONLINE.NET
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43784-2002Oct17.html Anti-War Site Gives Funding Boost to Hill Democrats By Evelyn Nieves Democrats battling for political survival in races that may decide the balance of power in Congress are getting a big boost from the anti-war effort. MoveOnPAC.org, an Internet site, has raised more than $1 million in 48 hours for what it calls four heroes of Congress who opposed the Iraq resolution. Sen. Paul D. Wellstone of Minnesota, Reps. Rick Larsen and Jay Inslee of Washington, and Rep. Rush D. Holt of New Jersey are being rewarded as heroes of the anti-war effort with money to fight their opponents in these last two weeks before the election, said Peter Schurman, executive director of MoveOn.org, and a spokesman for the MoveOnPAC. Since raising more than $1 million from 25,000 donors, the political action committee has added Bill Bradbury, running for Senate in Oregon, and Rep. James H. Maloney of Connecticut to its efforts. MoveOnPAC.org also plans to give the candidates practical help in the form of volunteers, Schurman said. Over the next two weeks we'll be providing a variety of opportunities to win key races -- by volunteering, by voting, by raising money, by talking to friends -- all a variety of important steps people can take, Schurman said. These elections are about participation and we're going to win by participating. MoveOn.org was begun by two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Wes Boyd and Joan Blades, to lobby against the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. (Its name comes from its original message: Censure and move on.) MoveOnPAC.org, a separate legal entity run by many of the same people as MoveOn.org, enables people to make an impact on Congress by pooling their money to make a decisive impact where it can make the most difference, Schurman said. Contributions made to the candidates online go directly and instantly to the candidate's campaign. Study: GOP Didn't Eject McKinney At one point or another, Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) or her father has blamed Jews, Indians, Republicans, Democrats and Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes (D) for her loss to rival Denise Majette in August's primary. A study by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution appears to have eliminated one of those groups, or at least played down its significance. The newspaper estimates that a little more than 3,000 Republicans voted for Majette -- less than one-sixth of her margin of victory. McKinney had claimed that large numbers of Republicans had taken advantage of the state's open primary laws, which allow crossover voting, in a broad, concerted effort to throw her out of office. Several of her supporters have since sued to reverse the results of the election, arguing that more than 37,000 Republicans voted for Majette and that their votes violated the right of blacks living in the district to choose their own representative. McKinney's spokeswoman declined to comment on the study. But her father, J.E. Billy McKinney, a state representative who also lost a reelection bid in the primary, told the paper he did not accept its findings. It's biased, just like everything else the Journal-Constitution does, he said. Quotable National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Thomas M. Davis III (Va.) is known for being plainspoken, but even his own aides were taken aback when he let loose yesterday during a speech at the National Press Club. Referring to California GOP gubernatorial candidate William E. Simon Jr., Davis said, I don't think there's a worse-run race in the country than the governor's race in California, on the part of the Republicans. This was a belt-high medium fastball, and we just seem to have booted it. Then he ripped into Democrat Stephanie Herseth, 31, who is running for the House in South Dakota. She has not held a job longer than 14 months, he said. So this will be a two-year job if she's elected. Staff writer Juliet Eilperin and staff researcher Brian Faler contributed to this report. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis 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] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49390-2002Oct18.html A Region Running Scared? By Monte Reel On the eve of another weekend of postponed homecoming games, of protective postures at the gas pump, of barren public spaces, Steve Coleman had a question: Is the Washington region's collective response to the recent sniper killings -- a reaction that experts say is without precedent -- appropriate? Coleman, director of the nonprofit Washington Parks People, reluctantly joined the list of those who canceled weekend events, his being a public movie screening at a park in Northeast Washington. He didn't want to, he said, but the city told him to do it. I don't understand it, he said. We didn't shut down after Sept. 11, and we've had hundreds of people killed every year in Washington by gunfire. I think administrators at schools are worried about liability, and the school lockdowns seem to be fueling the other decisions being made across the board. Even if few are going so far as to baldly suggest that the region is overreacting, Coleman isn't alone in questioning the continuing public response 2 1/2 weeks after the sniper began terrorizing the region. But those questions don't lend themselves to easy answers, say experts who study the effects of serial killings on communities. That's because this case -- and the subsequent public response -- are without precedent in recent U.S. history, they say. The Boston Strangler, the Hillside Strangler, the Atlanta child murders, the Zodiac Killer, the coed murders at the University of Florida -- none of them were like this, said James A. Fox, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University in Boston, who has studied serial killings for 25 years. The risk here is not restricted by any demographic characteristic, so everyone feels like a target. In Gainesville [at the University of Florida], for example, the victims were middle-class coeds, so it didn't have the broad impact. They didn't cancel football games there, because [the targets] wouldn't have fit the pattern. Here there is no pattern. And when anyone might be a target, taking cover is natural. The normal reaction is to cower and hide, and people who don't have that reaction initially probably have more reason to question their response than those who do, said Barry Glassner, a professor of sociology at the University of Southern California and the author of the book The Culture of Fear. But that's just the initial reaction. At some point, the question becomes, 'Where do we go from here?' The answer, he said, generally comes from leaders of area schools and local governments. Since the first sniper shooting Oct. 2, a sort of domino effect has spurred decision-makers: School systems have decided, in conference calls with law enforcement arranged through the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, to suspend all outdoor activities. Then day-care centers and youth soccer leagues have followed the lead of their public school systems, and smaller community groups have fallen into line. An example: When the Montgomery County school system announced that it would cancel all outdoor events this weekend, the city of Rockville consequently postponed an auto show, its weekly farmers' market and all recreation activities that take place outside. Rockville's historical society, in turn, canceled its annual house tour and antiques and crafts fair. Then organizers of an arts festival in Bethesda decided to pull the plug, too. And now, another domino is falling as others question the messages, intended or not, that the mass cancellations send. You have a . . . situation where nobody wants to be the first to stand up and give the message, 'We're not going to allow you to intimidate us,' said William O. Ritchie, a retired D.C. police deputy chief, who said his opinions don't necessarily reflect those of a security firm he now works for. Ritchie added, The community as a whole is going to have to step up to the plate, along with some support from law enforcement, and go on with the rest of their lives. With a killer at large and the most recent slaying only days old, it could take a while before a suitable comfort level returns, Glassner said. In past cases in which a serial killer has terrorized a community, victims could generally be grouped into specific categories that excluded the majority of a community's residents. David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam killer in New York in the 1970s, targeted dark-haired women and their escorts. Ted Bundy targeted female students. Wayne Williams targeted black children in the Atlanta area. The unknown is what people fear most, said Louis Graham, chief deputy of the DeKalb County (Ga.) sheriff's department,
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45779-2002Oct18.html Wis. Senate Leader Faces Charges By Jenny PriceMADISON, Wis. #150;#150; The state Assembly's two most power Republican leaders were charged with felony misconduct in office Friday, one day after the Senate majority leader was charged with 20 felony counts.PProsecutors investigating illegal campaigning in the state capitol also filed charges against another Republican Assembly member and a former employee Friday.PThe three felony counts against Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen stem from his supervision of the Assembly Republican Caucus, hiring of the former employee, Sherry Schultz, to work as a full-time fund-raiser on state time, and using his legislative staff to work on his political campaigns.PHe also is charged with a misdemeanor of using his public position to obtain financial gain for the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee, the same charge Assistant Majority Leader Bonnie Ladwig faces.PSingle charges against Assembly Majority Leader Steve Foti and Schultz stem from her employment as well.PJensen issued a statement Friday morning denying the charges.PI intend to prove my innocence and fight for our honor, he said.PFriday's charges bring the total of lawmakers charged in the investigation to five.PSenate Majority Leader Chuck Chvala, a Democrat, was charged with 20 felony counts Thursday, and fellow Democratic Sen. Brian Burke was charged with 18 felonies over the summer.PChvala, accused of demanding campaign contributions for himself and other Democrats and threatening to block legislation if lobbyists failed to deliver, said Thursday he would resign his position once Democrats select a majority leader.PHe denounced the charges as an attempt to influence the Nov. 5 elections by politically motivated special interest lobbyists and a district attorney bent on political revenge PI will fight these allegations because they are not true, Chvala said.PHe could face up to 90 years in prison and $200,000 in fines if convicted on the charges, which include extortion, misconduct in public office, making unlawfu with the Elections Board.PThe investigations by Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann and Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard began last year after the Wisconsin State Journal reported that legislative caucus employees were coordinating campaign activities from their state offices using state resources, in violation of the law.PThe caucuses #150; one for each party in each chamber #150; were created in the 1960s to do research for lawmakers. The partisan bodies were eliminated last year in a deal legislative leaders reached that was meant to end a state investigation into the allegations.PChvala, 47, was elected to the Senate in 1984 and has been Democratic leader since 1995. He ran for governor in 1994, losing to then-Gov. Tommy Thompson, who is now secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.PBurke was charged over the summer with using his Capitol office to collect campaign contributions in his now-defunct bid for attorney general. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis 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://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http://archive.jab.org/ctrl;listserv.aol.com/ A HREF=http://archive.jab.org/ctrl;listserv.aol.com/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] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32393-2002Oct15.html Tips for Staying Safe Police yesterday offered these tips for protection against sniper-style shootings: While outside, try to keep moving. A moving target is more difficult to hit than one that is standing still. If you must remain in one place in an area where you feel vulnerable, select the darkest part of the area to sit or stand in. When moving outside, walk briskly in a zigzag pattern. If you must stand outside, try to keep some type of protective cover between yourself and any open areas where a sniper might be located. For example, if you are fueling your car, stand between your vehicle and the gas pump and bend your knees to lower your profile. If you are fired on in an open area, drop to the ground and roll away from where you were standing. Look for the closest protective cover and run toward it in short, zigzag dashes. Be constantly aware of your surroundings while outside. Note any suspicious vehicles or activities, move away from them and report them to the police. Remember that a sniper with the right equipment can shoot accurately from about 500 yards away, the equivalent of five football fields. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis 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://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http://archive.jab.org/ctrl;listserv.aol.com/ A HREF=http://archive.jab.org/ctrl;listserv.aol.com/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] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45837-2002Oct4.html U.S. Says Courts Have No Say in Combatant Case The federal government yesterday renewed arguments that military detainee Yaser Esam Hamdi is not entitled to a lawyer and that only the executive branch can determine who is an enemy combatant. The argument came in a 64-page brief filed with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond. Hamdi is a Saudi national captured in Afghanistan in November. He was moved from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a Navy brig in Norfolk when investigators learned he was born in Louisiana. Hamdi's father has been fighting to get a lawyer to see Hamdi, and a federal judge in Norfolk has twice authorized such a visit. But the appeals court stayed both visits. U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar ruled in August that a two-page Defense Department declaration was insufficient evidence that Hamdi is an enemy combatant. The Justice Department cited the separation-of-powers doctrine, arguing that the judiciary lacks institutional competence in determining whether a prisoner is an enemy combatant. The brief said that enemy combatants, even if they are American, are not entitled to counsel under the laws of war. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis 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://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;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] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58531-2002Sep24.html Blair: Iraqi Weapons 'Current, Serious' Threat By Ed Johnson LONDON Iraq has military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, and has tried to acquire significant quantities of uranium from Africa, the British government said today as it published n a dossier of evidence about Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction. Unless we face up to the threat, not only do we risk undermining the authority of the U.N., whose resolutions he defies, but more importantly and in the longer term, we place at risk the lives and prosperity of our own people, Prime Minister Tony Blair said in an introduction to the 50-page report. The document, released hours before Parliament convened in a special session to debate possible military action against Iraq, argues that Saddam continues to develop chemical and biological weapons, is trying to acquire nuclear weapons and has extended the range of its ballistic missiles. Iraq rejected the British analysis. The British prime minister is serving the campaign of lies led by Zionists against Iraq. Blair is part of this misleading campaign, Iraqi Culture Minister Hammed Youssef Hammadi told reporters at the opening of a painting exhibition in Baghdad. Blair is President Bush's closest European ally, but faces dissent among lawmakers in his governing Labor Party and a reported rift in his Cabinet over an Iraqi war. Commentators said the document was published in an effort to shore up domestic support for possible military action against Iraq. Addressing a packed House of Commons today, Blair said Saddam risked war, international ostracism, sanctions and the isolation of the Iraqi economy to keep his weapons program. His weapons of mass destruction program is active, detailed and growing, said Blair. He added: Our case is simply this: not that we take military action come what may, but that the case of insuring Iraqi disarmament as the U.N. itself has stipulated, is overwhelming. But left-wing lawmakers said the government had provided little new information and remained unconvinced of the need for war. Tony Blair will have to do better than this if he wants to convince the British public to go to war, said Labor lawmaker Diane Abbott. Within minutes of the release of the dossier, anti-war protesters outside Parliament began blasting John Lennon's Give Peace a Chance. A poll in today's Guardian newspaper said 86 percent of Britons believe the government should seek the support of the British Parliament and the United Nations before taking military action against Iraq. The report said Saddam attaches great importance to weapons of mass destruction as the basis of Iraq's regional power. It shows that he does not regard them only as weapons of last resort. He is ready to use them, including against his own population, and is determined to retain them, in breach of United Nations Security Council resolutions, the report said. The dossier provided a highly detailed history of Iraq's weapons program and an assessment of its current capabilities based on British and allied intelligence. However, there appeared to be little new information in the report. Analysts have been warning for years that Saddam has continued to develop chemical and biological weapons and has also tried to develop nuclear weapons, although with little sign of success. Maj. Charles Heyman, editor of Jane's World Armies, said the report does not produce any convincing evidence, or any killer fact, that says that Saddam Hussein has to be taken out straight away. What it does do is produce very convincing evidence that the weapons inspectors have to be pushed back into Iraq very quickly, Heyman said. A report published earlier this month by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said Iraq retains substantial chemical and biological weapons and could assemble a nuclear weapon within months if it obtained radioactive material. The government's dossier rejected Iraqi claims that it has destroyed its biological weapons, saying Baghdad may retain huge stocks of anthrax and could deliver chemical and biological agents using free-fall bombs, rockets, helicopter and aircraft borne sprayers and ballistic missiles. Iraq now has mobile laboratories for developing biological warfare agents, the report said. The dossier said Baghdad tried to acquire significant quantities of uranium from Africa and has covertly tried to acquire technology and materials for the production of nuclear weapons. If U.N. sanctions against Iraq were lifted, Saddam could develop a nuclear weapon within 12 months to two years, said the dossier. Iraq has
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59403-2002Sep9.html A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis 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://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;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] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51857-2002Sep7.html A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis 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://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;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] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51857-2002Sep7.html Russia Denies U.S. Access on Bioweapons By Joby Warrick Russian officials have rebuffed a new U.S. attempt to pry loose key secrets from their former biological weapons program, including a genetically altered strain of anthrax bacteria that Pentagon scientists are eager to study and that Russia had earlier promised to deliver, according to Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.). Government and security officials also balked at allowing a U.S. congressional delegation to visit one of Russia's four military-run biological research labs, which have remained closed to Americans despite a decade of cooperation between the two countries on securing stockpiles of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. The rejections came during a visit to Russia in late August by a delegation headed by Lugar, who is backing legislation to expand U.S.-Russian efforts to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Despite progress in many areas -- including the destruction of hundreds of warheads, bombers and submarines -- the incidents underscore lingering bureaucratic opposition to the cooperation on terrorism pledged by President Vladimir Putin and President Bush at a summit last November in Texas, Lugar said. It shows that Putin is far ahead of much of Russia's bureaucracy on these matters, Lugar said Friday in a briefing to reporters. But Lugar also warned against allowing the setbacks to undermine a 10-year-old U.S. commitment to help Russia destroy or secure its vast stockpiles of unconventional weapons -- a stockpile that Lugar describes as the United States' greatest security threat. Opposition in Congress to providing more assistance to Russia has delayed the opening of a U.S.-funded Russian facility built to incinerate nearly 2 million Soviet-era chemical weapons, potentially enough to destroy the world's population 20 times over, Lugar said. Lugar said that at other stops on his trip, Russians worked closely with Americans to turn former weapons factories into research centers to cure diseases and reduce terrorism threats. Lugar acknowledged he was unsuccessful during his visit in resolving a five-year dispute with Russia over a genetically modified strain of anthrax bacteria. The strain, developed by scientists at the Russian State Research Center for Applied Microbiology in the city of Obolensk, has been reported in scientific journals to resist many anthrax vaccines. Eager to learn whether U.S. vaccines would work against the strain, the Defense Department in 1997 signed a contract with Russian researchers to acquire a sample. But Russia has refused to release the microbes, citing laws restricting the export of dangerous pathogens. Lugar pressed the issue Monday with senior Russian officials at Obolensk, and again three days later at a meeting in Moscow, but was given no firm commitment on the release of the strain. Russia's refusal to honor the contract has been cited by some in Congress who oppose granting a permanent waiver that would free up millions of dollars in U.S. spending for nonproliferation projects in Russia. Last month, Bush signed a temporary waiver that restored funding only through Sept. 30. Another sore point for the White House has been Russia's refusal to allow U.S. inspection of four biological research labs controlled by its Defense Ministry. While the U.S. government has provided millions of dollars to enhance security and retrain scientists at Russia's civilian-run bioweapons factories, the veil of secrecy surrounding military labs has fueled suspicions that Russia is continuing research on offensive weapons. Russia has said all research on offensive biological weapons has stopped. One of the closed labs, the Center of Military-Technical Problems of Biological Defense at Yekaterinburg (formerly Sverdlovsk), was the site of an accidental anthrax release in 1979 that killed at least 68 people. On Wednesday, Lugar's delegation traveled to another closed center, the Scientific Research Institute at Kirov, after receiving signals that a visit might finally be permitted. But despite an enthusiastic airport reception by Kirov's political leaders and news media, Lugar was refused entry to the military facility. Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov had no explanation for the refusal during a meeting the following day. Lugar said he warned Kirov officials they were jeopardizing their future by holding on to Soviet-era secrecy. They were interested in getting [Western] pharmaceutical companies to invest in these facilities, Lugar said. But as I told them, it's a non-starter if investors can't even get inside the place. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51526-2002Sep7.html Bush's Father Feared Expanded Role in Iraq By Walter Pincus Four years ago, former president George H.W. Bush wrote that there was unanimity within his administration that the 1991 Persian Gulf War should end once the forces of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's had been driven from Kuwait. If he had sent U.S. military forces on to Baghdad, Bush asserted in the 1998 book he wrote with Brent Scowcroft, his national security adviser, The United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in 'mission creep,' and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs, Bush wrote in the book, titled A World Transformed.'' As the administration of President Bush intensifies its efforts to convince Congress, the American public and U.S. allies of the need to confront Hussein again, it is also looking at how a policy on Iraq evolved within the first Bush administration 11 years ago. In response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the U.N. Security Council that November authorized the use of force to drive the Iraqis out but did not make a change of government in Baghdad part of the package. President George H.W. Bush and his aides informally decided that although removing Hussein would be beneficial, that goal would not be part of U.S. policy unless the Iraqi president used chemical or biological weapons against U.S. or coalition troops or a neighboring country such as Israel. He did not. Months before the war began in January 1991, while Pentagon planners were still at work, the White House had discussed the question of Hussein's future. At a December 1990 meeting of senior national security officials, Hussein's removal was set aside, according to Scowcroft. Making it a formal goal of the coalition the United States was assembling for the war was well beyond the bounds of the U.N. resolution guiding us, he wrote. If the United States announced such a goal unilaterally, he added, We would be committing ourselves -- alone -- to removing one regime and installing another and if the Iraqis themselves didn't take matters into their own hands, we would be facing an indefinite occupation of a hostile state and some dubious 'nation-building.' There also was the problem of maintaining the support of Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia that were vital to the war effort, Bush wrote: We also believed the United States should not go it alone. . . . Mounting an effective military counter to Iraq's invasion required the backing and bases of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states. On Feb. 26, 1991, two days after U.S. and coalition troops began their successful ground offensive to free Kuwait, Bush wrote in his diary, We would declare an end once I was sure we had met all our military objectives and fulfilled the U.N. resolutions. The following day, after then-Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney reported that the southern part of Kuwait was free and that military operations would halt that day or the next, U.S. television screens were filled with pictures of U.S. aircraft, artillery and tanks pounding Iraqi units fleeing north from Kuwait City to the southern Iraqi city of Basra. The carnage had an effect on the White House. We had all become increasingly concerned over impressions being created in the press about the 'highway of death' from Kuwait City to Basra, Scowcroft wrote. In the Oval Office that afternoon, Bush asked his advisers, including Cheney and Gen. Colin L. Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, if it was time to stop. They decided it was. There was no dissent, Scowcroft wrote. Bush later wrote that Robert M. Gates, who was deputy national security adviser at the time, told him, We crushed their 43 divisions, but we stopped -- we didn't just want to kill, and history will look on that kindly. There had been a secret plan drawn up by the Army's chief operations officer to seize Baghdad, according to a book by Michael R. Gordon and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor published in 1995. The plan was circulated after the war ended. While it raised the possibility of a decisive victory, it also opened the door to a protracted occupation of Iraq, which was not the kind of war Powell or [Gen. H. Norman] Schwartzkopf wanted, they wrote. Bush, in his book, laid out other reasons for not sending U.S. forces into Iraq, many of which are being cited by U.S. and foreign opponents to a new military offensive. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com Good explanation *why* GHWB didn't attempt a Japanisation of Iraq To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34847-2002Sep3.html Heading for Trouble By James Webb Country music's most popular song this summer is a defiantly nationalistic tune by Toby Keith, in which he warns potential adversaries that if they mess with us, we'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way. Last week the Chinese government showed us its way. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had brought a conciliatory gesture from the Bush administration, agreeing to recognize a separatist group in China's Xinjiang province as a terrorist entity. This diplomatic contortion was so appeasing that the Economist magazine labeled its logic astonishing. And yet the day after Armitage left, the Chinese government sent its own political signal by test-firing a DF-4 missile, which has a range of more than 4,000 miles and was designed to attack U.S. military bases on Guam. The implied disrespect of this incident did not occur in a vacuum, either militarily or diplomatically. As our country remains obsessed with Saddam Hussein, other nations have begun positioning themselves for an American war with Iraq and, most important, for its aftermath. China, which has pursued a strategic axis with key Islamic nations for nearly 20 years, received the Iraqi foreign minister just after Armitage's departure, condemning in advance an American attack on that country. Russia has been assiduously courting -- both diplomatically and economically -- all three nations identified by President Bush as the axis of evil. Iran -- the number one state sponsor of international terrorism, according to our own State Department -- has conducted at least four flight tests of the nuclear-capable Shahab-3 missile, whose range of 800 miles is enough to hit U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, Turkey and Central Asia. Meanwhile, American military leaders have been trying to bring a wider focus to the band of neoconservatives that began beating the war drums on Iraq before the dust had even settled on the World Trade Center. Despite the efforts of the neocons to shut them up or to dismiss them as unqualified to deal in policy issues, these leaders, both active-duty and retired, have been nearly unanimous in their concerns. Is there an absolutely vital national interest that should lead us from containment to unilateral war and a long-term occupation of Iraq? And would such a war and its aftermath actually increase our ability to win the war against international terrorism? On this second point, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the Joint Chiefs vice chairman, mentioned in a news conference last week that the scope for potential anti-terrorist action included -- at a minimum -- Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Georgia, Colombia, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and North Korea. America's best military leaders know that they are accountable to history not only for how they fight wars, but also for how they prevent them. The greatest military victory of our time -- bringing an expansionist Soviet Union in from the cold while averting a nuclear holocaust -- was accomplished not by an invasion but through decades of intense maneuvering and continuous operations. With respect to the situation in Iraq, they are conscious of two realities that seem to have been lost in the narrow debate about Saddam Hussein himself. The first reality is that wars often have unintended consequences -- ask the Germans, who in World War I were convinced that they would defeat the French in exactly 42 days. The second is that a long-term occupation of Iraq would beyond doubt require an adjustment of force levels elsewhere, and could eventually diminish American influence in other parts of the world. Other than the flippant criticisms of our failure to take Baghdad during the Persian Gulf War, one sees little discussion of an occupation of Iraq, but it is the key element of the current debate. The issue before us is not simply whether the United States should end the regime of Saddam Hussein, but whether we as a nation are prepared to physically occupy territory in the Middle East for the next 30 to 50 years. Those who are pushing for a unilateral war in Iraq know full well that there is no exit strategy if we invade and stay. This reality was the genesis of a rift that goes back to the Gulf War itself, when neoconservatives were vocal in their calls for a MacArthurian regency in Baghdad. Their expectation is that the United States would not only change Iraq's regime but also remain as a long-term occupation force in an attempt to reconstruct Iraqi society itself. The connotations of a MacArthurian regency in Baghdad show how inapt the
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27535-2002Sep2.html Al Qaeda Gold Moved to Sudan By Douglas Farah Financial officers of al Qaeda and the Taliban have quietly shipped large quantities of gold out of Pakistan to Sudan in recent weeks, transiting through the United Arab Emirates and Iran, according to European, Pakistani and U.S. investigators. The sources said several shipments of boxes of gold, usually disguised as other products, were taken by small boat from the Pakistani port of Karachi to either Iran or Dubai, and from there mixed with other goods and flown by chartered airplanes to Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. Although it is not clear how much gold has been moved, U.S. and European officials said the quantity was significant and was an important indicator that the al Qaeda network and members of Afghanistan's deposed Taliban militia still had access to large financial reserves. European and U.S. intelligence officials said the movement of gold also highlighted three significant developments in the war on terrorism: the growing role of Iranian intelligence units allied with the country's hard-line clerics in protecting and aiding al Qaeda; the potential reemergence of Sudan as a financial center for the organization; and the ability of the terrorist group to generate new sources of revenue despite the global crackdown on its finances. The sources said Sudan may have been chosen because Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born al Qaeda leader, and other members of the network are familiar with the country and retain business contacts there. They said traditional havens for al Qaeda money on the Arabian peninsula such as Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates were under intense international scrutiny, while transactions in Sudan could more easily pass unnoticed. Gold has for years been the preferred financial instrument of the Taliban and al Qaeda. Most of the Taliban treasury was kept in gold when the militia ruled Afghanistan, and taxes were often collected in gold. Just before the Taliban and al Qaeda were driven from Afghanistan last year, the two groups shipped large amounts of gold to Dubai, and from there to other safe havens, according to U.S., European and Arab officials. Senior U.S. intelligence officials said they are investigating the information about the new gold shipments and had opened a case on the matter but had no further comment. We know they are looking at new sources of revenue and are finding new ways to raise and move funds to where they are accessible, a U.S. official said. The bankers are the ones that move the money and the bankers are not sitting in caves in Afghanistan. European and U.S. sources said they became aware of the shipments after they occurred, and have asked the Sudanese government to take measures to halt the flow. A spokesman for the Sudanese Embassy in Washington said he had no official information about the shipments and found the information hard to believe. Sudan is not going to allow anything like this to come in knowingly, the official said. We are concerned about terrorism. We are on a high level of alert since September 11. But European intelligence sources said one of the hubs of bin Laden's organization continues to be Sudan, where he lived from 1991 to 1996, when he was forced to move to Afghanistan. Although the United States and other countries have praised Sudan for its cooperation in the war on terrorism, European and U.S. officials say that bin Laden, who invested tens of millions of dollars in the country when it harbored him, continues to have economic interests there. While living in Sudan, bin Laden operated a large construction business, bought extensive land holdings and helped found a bank. A senior European intelligence official said there was growing evidence that Khartoum was again serving as a sort of hub for al Qaeda business transactions. He has banking contacts there, he has business contacts there and he is intimately familiar with the political and intelligence structure there, the official said. He never fully left Sudan despite moving to Afghanistan. The gold appears to be the fruit of what one Pakistani businessman knowledgeable of Taliban financing called a commodity for commodity exchange, with the Taliban and al Qaeda trading opium and heroin for gold. When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, according to Pakistani intelligence officials, it actively engaged in opium and heroin production, and allowed al Qaeda to raise funds through taxing the cultivation of poppy, the raw material for heroin. The Pakistani businessman said that over the past two months Pakistani intelligence has picked up numerous reports indicating that al Qaeda and the Taliban were sending
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4544-2002Aug27.html Double Standards Make Enemies By Salman Rushdie On Sept. 5 and 6 the State Department will host a high-powered conference on anti-Americanism, an unusual step indicating the depth of American concern about this increasingly globalized phenomenon. Anti-Americanism can be mere shallow name-calling. A recent article in Britain's Guardian newspaper described Americans as having a bug up their collective arse the size of Manhattan and suggested that 'American' is a type of personality which is intense, humourless, partial to psychobabble and utterly convinced of its own importance. More seriously, anti-Americanism can be contradictory: When the United States failed to intervene in Bosnia, that was considered wrong, but when it did subsequently intervene in Kosovo, that was wrong too. Anti-Americanism can be hypocritical: wearing blue jeans or Donna Karan, eating fast food or Alice Waters-style cuisine, their heads full of American music, movies, poetry and literature, the apparatchiks of the international cultural commissariat decry the baleful influence of the American culture that nobody is forcing them to consume. It can be misguided; the logical implication of the Western-liberal opposition to America's Afghan war is that it would be better if the Taliban were still in power. And it can be ugly; the post-Sept. 11 crowing of the serves-you-right brigade was certainly that. However, during the past year the Bush administration has made a string of foreign policy miscalculations, and the State Department conference must acknowledge this. After the brief flirtation with consensus-building during the Afghan operation, the United States' brazen return to unilateralism has angered even its natural allies. The Republican grandee James Baker has warned President Bush not to go it alone, at least in the little matter of effecting a regime change in Iraq. In the year's major crisis zones, the Bushies have been getting things badly wrong. According to a Security Council source, the reason for the United Nations' lamentable inaction during the recent Kashmir crisis was that the United States (with Russian backing) blocked all attempts by member states to mandate the United Nations to act. But if the United Nations is not to be allowed to intervene in a bitter dispute between two member states, both nuclear powers of growing political volatility, in an attempt to defuse the danger of nuclear war, then what on Earth is it for? Many observers of the problems of the region will also be wondering how long Pakistani-backed terrorism in Kashmir will be winked at by America because of Pakistan's support for the war against terror on its other frontier. Many Kashmiris will be angry that their long-standing desire for an autonomous state is being ignored for the sake of U.S. realpolitik. And as the Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf seizes more and more power and does more and more damage to his country's constitution, the U.S. government's decision to go on hailing him as a champion of democracy does more damage to America's already shredded regional credibility. Nor is Kashmir the only South Asian grievance. The massacres in the Indian state of Gujarat, mostly of Indian Muslims by fundamentalist Hindu mobs, have been shown to be the result of planned attacks led by Hindu political organizations. But in spite of testimony presented to a congressional commission, the U.S. administration has done nothing to investigate U.S.-based organizations that are funding these groups, such as the World Hindu Council. Just as American Irish fundraisers once bankrolled the terrorists of the Provisional IRA, so, now, shadowy bodies across America are helping to pay for mass murder in India, while the U.S. government turns a blind eye. Once again, the supposedly high-principled rhetoric of the war against terror is being made to look like a smoke screen for a highly selective pursuit of American vendettas. Apparently Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are terrorists who matter; Hindu fanatics and Kashmiri killers aren't. This double standard makes enemies. In the heat of the dispute over Iraq strategy, South Asia has become a sideshow. (America's short attention span creates enemies, too.) And it is in Iraq that George W. Bush may be about to make his biggest mistake, and to unleash a generation-long plague of anti-Americanism that could make the present epidemic look like a time of rude good health. Inevitably, the reasons lie in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Like it or not, much of the world thinks of Israel as the 51st state, America's client and surrogate, and Bush's obvious rapport with Ariel Sharon does nothing to
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4318-2002Aug27.html Forecast: Deficits To Last Into '05 By Jonathan Weisman The most dramatic drop in tax revenue since 1946 has put the government into deficit for the next three years and has shriveled the projected 10-year federal budget surplus by 60 percent in just five months, the Congressional Budget Office reported yesterday. The CBO's influential midyear budget forecast underscores the deterioration of the government's fiscal health. As recently as March, congressional forecasters had predicted the government would run a much larger surplus -- $2.4 trillion -- than the $1 trillion total that the CBO now foresees between 2003 and 2012. That number has shrunk because of a plunge in tax receipts, the likes of which has not been seen since the repeal of World War II surtaxes 56 years ago, said CBO Director Dan L. Crippen. Economists appeared to be at a loss to explain it. Crippen merely called it astounding. The report diverges significantly from the White House's forecast released last month. It comes as President Bush prepares to unveil a new round of tax cuts to stimulate the stock market and pushes Congress to make last year's 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut permanent. The CBO report may have undercut that campaign. According to its projections, nearly all the 10-year surplus will materialize after 2010, when the president's tax cut is scheduled to expire. Democrats pounced on the new projections, accusing the White House of sugarcoating the burgeoning budget problem. Republicans said the CBO's numbers only underscore the need for Congress to control spending. The president believes the lesson from today's CBO numbers is that Congress needs to hold the line on spending, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said from the president's ranch in Crawford, Tex. And if Congress won't do it, the president will do it for Congress. Despite partisan rhetoric, neither party played down the deterioration in the government's long-term financial position. Crippen pointedly did not attribute that decline simply to the economic slowdown or the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. This year's $131 billion plunge in tax revenue was considerably sharper than the economy's own fall, just as the growth in tax receipts was more robust in the late 1990s than was the economy's growth. Just last year, CBO projected a $5.6 trillion surplus between 2002 and 2011. That figure allowed Bush to say his 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut would leave room for a prescription drug benefit for seniors and a significant effort to reduce the federal debt. Now, that $5.6 trillion projection has shrunk to $336 billion over the same period. From 2003 to 2012, the CBO's surplus projection jumps to $1 trillion, but that figure is considerably more pessimistic that the administration's forecast of $2.5 trillion over the same timeframe. The White House forecast in July that if spending were strictly controlled in other areas, Congress could make last year's $1.35 trillion tax cut permanent, raise defense spending substantially, and pass legislation to pick up some of the cost of health insurance and senior citizens' prescription drugs -- and still squeak out a slim, $41 billion surplus through 2007. Congressional forecasters -- and even White House officials -- now doubt those numbers. Of CBO's $1 trillion, 10-year surplus forecast, $845 billion would come after the tax cut expires after 2010. All of that money would come from surplus Social Security taxes. And that trillion-dollar figure does not include large military budget increases or a prescription drug benefit. Besides, Crippen said, his agency was privy to important economic information -- including July's stock market swoon and a broad re-estimate of recent economic growth rates -- that the White House Office of Management and Budget did not have when OMB issued its forecast last month. They would probably change their estimate if they had that luxury, Crippen told reporters. White House Budget Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. conceded the point. CBO's projections are based on new economic data and more recent information on the decline in revenue collection, he said. OMB and the Treasury Department face the same challenge in continuing to look for ways to achieve greater accuracy in forecasting. Democrats were not so charitable. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) accused the White House of Enron-type accounting. The administration's forecasts for economic growth and unemployment, both for this year and next, are more positive than either CBO's or the blue-chip consensus figures of private economists. The administration also predicts the government will
Re: [CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- GASP you mean the Bush tax cut was a mistake? You mean throwing away this country's first surplus since jimmy carter, just to aid the top 1% of the population may have been a mistake? Isn't hinting at that the same as helping terrorists? on 8/29/02 4:57 AM, Alamaine Ratliff at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The most dramatic drop in tax revenue since 1946 has put the government into deficit for the next three years and has shriveled the projected 10-year federal budget surplus by 60 percent in just five months, the Congressional Budget Office reported yesterday. -- -- -- -- -- Planet spins - so do I neo-sufi wisdom NEURONAUTIC INSTITUTE on-line: http://home.earthlink.net/~thew A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis 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://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;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] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9219-2002Aug28.html War on Al Qaeda Funds Stalled By Colum Lynch UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 28 -- A global campaign to block al Qaeda's access to money has stalled, enabling the terrorist network to obtain a fresh infusion of tens of millions of dollars and putting it in a position to finance future attacks, according to a draft U.N. report. In the months immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States and other U.N. members moved to shut down al Qaeda's financial network, freezing more than $112 million in assets belonging to suspected members and supporters of the organization. But only $10 million in additional funds has been blocked over the past eight months, according to the 43-page draft report, which was written by a U.N. panel responsible for monitoring the enforcement of an arms, travel and financial embargo against al Qaeda and its associates. Al Qaeda continues to draw on funds from the personal inheritance of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born militant who heads the network, as well as from investments and money diverted or embezzled from charitable organizations, according to the draft report. The report of the Monitoring Group on al Qaeda, which is expected to be released next week, offers a rare survey of the state of the financial war on terrorism. In the aftermath of the attacks in New York and on the Pentagon, President Bush announced the freezing of assets of dozens of organizations and individuals linked to al Qaeda, and U.S. diplomats harnessed the authority of the U.N. Security Council behind the effort. The Security Council adopted a resolution requiring the United Nations' 189 members to seize the assets of individuals placed on a U.N. list of suspected associates of al Qaeda. Despite this campaign, the report says, al Qaeda's financial backers in North Africa, the Middle East and Asia manage at least $30 million in investments for the group, with some estimates going as high as $300 million. The money reportedly includes investments from Mauritius, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Panama, it says. Al Qaeda is also suspected of having bank accounts under the names of unidentified intermediaries in Dubai, Hong Kong, London, Malaysia and Vienna. And private donations to the group, estimated at $16 million a year, are believed to continue, largely unabated, the report says. Despite initial successes in locating and freezing al Qaeda assets, the network continues to have access to considerable financial and other economic resources, the report says, adding that it has proven exceedingly difficult to identify these funds. Al Qaeda is by all accounts 'fit and well' and poised to strike again at its leisure, it says. The prime targets of the organization are likely to be persons and property of the United States of America and its allies in the fight against al Qaeda, as well as Israel. The U.N. panel says the task of blocking al Qaeda's funds has been frustrated by the group's decision to shift its assets into precious metals and gems, and to transfer its money through an informal money exchange network, known as hawalas, that is virtually impossible to trace. Revenue from hard-to-track illegal activities including smuggling, petty crime, robbery, embezzlement and credit card fraud augment these funds, it says. But the effort to shut down al Qaeda's financial network has also been hampered by the inadequate auditing of religious charities, the lax border controls in several European countries -- members of the Schengen Area group, which allow travelers to cross their borders with a single visa -- and the stringent evidentiary standards required by European governments before they will seize an individual's assets, the draft report says. The report says the Schengen Information System -- a computer program used to monitor border crossings in the group's 15 member states -- holds in its database only 40 of the 219 names on the U.N. list. Several members of the Schengen group said their national laws precluded them from placing their citizens' names on national watch lists without appropriate judicial basis, according to the U.N. report. The Schengen group is made up of 13 European Union members as well as Norway and Iceland. Britain and Ireland are the only EU members that are not part of the group. The U.N. panel warns that the refusal of key European countries to fully comply with the Security Council's sanctions could have a derogatory impact on the effort to shut down al Qaeda's financial operations. European governments have faced legal challenges from citizens on the U.N. list who say they have been denied their right to a trial, which is enshrined
[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4099-2002Aug27.html U.S., Saudis Oppose Summit Plan on Energy JOHANNESBURG, Aug. 27 -- The United States, Saudi Arabia and other wealthy nations reportedly worked today to water down proposals at a U.N. summit to rapidly expand the use of clean, renewable energy technologies. Such renewable energy sources as wind power and solar energy produce smaller and more expensive amounts of electricity than a traditional power plant. But the technologies generate a fraction of the smog of oil, coal and other fossil fuels, as well as gases believed to accelerate global warming. A proposal for the World Summit on Sustainable Development's action plan calls for the use of the technologies to be increased to account for 15 percent of the world's total energy production by 2010. Sources said delegates from the United States, Saudi Arabia and other industrialized and oil-producing states were lobbying to eliminate the provision. The European Union also wavered on the agreement. We may have to bend if we can't convince all of our partners, said one EU official, Christine Day. It's early in the negotiations. The moves by the industrialized countries angered environmental groups, which are demanding stiffer anti-pollution measures. The 10-day summit is focused on uplifting the world's poor and protecting the global environment. During today's open session, delegates called for increased global efforts to bring new agricultural technologies to impoverished farmers and railed against European and U.S. agricultural subsidies, saying they made it difficult for the farmers to compete on the world market. Developing countries are hoping the summit's action plan will call for the reduction or elimination of subsidies, a provision opposed by wealthy countries. The summit is unlikely to resolve the issue. No country can realistically be expected to make a major commitment here on those matters, said Alec Erwin, South Africa's trade minister. Targets and timetables were added to the summit's implementation plan as organizers sought new ways to compel nations to live up to their pledges. In the 10 years since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, treaties protecting biodiversity and limiting climate change have languished. However, the United States is seeking to erase specific targets and timetables on many topics throughout the plan, which includes 150 pages addressing biodiversity, food security, clean water and health care. Instead, U.S. officials said they prefer voluntary partnerships with business and other groups. I don't know of a goal that has protected a child from a waterborne disease or provided energy to a village, a senior U.S. diplomat told reporters in a background briefing. Goals do not by themselves bring about change or results. Also today, non-governmental groups complained they were being sidelined at the summit, saying they had trouble getting seats at the main event in a building that can't hold all the accredited delegates. The United Nations said it would try to accommodate them. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis 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://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;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] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@UFFDAONLINE.NET
-Caveat Lector- You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55102-2002Aug23.html U.S. Report Faulted Anthrax Prober By Dan Eggen The official in charge of the FBI's anthrax probe was accused of misconduct and recommended for discipline for his role in a flawed review of the deadly Ruby Ridge standoff, but a Justice Department official later concluded that punishment was unwarranted, according to newly revealed information about the case. Van A. Harp, a 32-year FBI veteran who now heads the bureau's Washington field office, allegedly committed misconduct by helping to prepare an incomplete report on the 1992 Ruby Ridge siege that had the effect of protecting high-level FBI officials, according to a confidential 1999 report by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility. The report by Justice Department attorney Richard M. Rogers recommended a letter of censure or suspension for Harp, but Stephen R. Colgate, then the assistant attorney general, rejected that recommendation in January 2001, sources said. As has been disclosed, Colgate also declined to issue penalties against others, including then-FBI Director Louis J. Freeh. Harp's role in the investigations of Ruby Ridge had not been previously reported. Harp was put in charge of the Washington field office in July 2001, an influential position that thrust him into the spotlight when the office took the lead in the probe of last fall's deadly anthrax mailings. He previously was head of the FBI office in Cleveland. He worked in the Buffalo office at the time of the Ruby Ridge probe. In a written statement, Harp said that leaks about his role in the Ruby Ridge inquiries violate all sense of propriety and ignore reviews that exonerated him. Actions such as this impugn not only my integrity but also the judgment of FBI and DOJ [Department of Justice] officials in the decision-making progress, Harp wrote. My actions have been scrutinized at the highest levels of the FBI and DOJ, and no wrongdoing was found. . . . I firmly stand on my record. FBI spokesman Mike Kortan said it is clear that Harp and others were exonerated. The decision on any proposed discipline was ultimately made by senior Justice officials, who in this case determined no wrongdoing on the part of these individuals, Kortan said. But in a letter Thursday to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, the National Whistleblower Center alleged that the lack of punishment for Harp and others underscores a perverse culture at the FBI in which senior managers protect each other from fair scrutiny. The wrongdoers keep rising to the top, said the letter from Kris Kolesnik, the center's director, and Frederic Whitehurst, a former FBI chemist who revealed problems at the bureau's crime lab. Meanwhile, those who refuse to look the other way face a dead-end in their careers. Kolesnik and Whitehurst urged Mueller, who was named to head the FBI eight months after the Ruby Ridge sanction decisions were made, to release internal documents about Ruby Ridge and its aftermath. They contended that disclosure would help restore the public's confidence that was eroded because of misconduct in these investigations. Rank-and-file FBI agents have long complained that senior officials cover for each other during controversies, while lower-level agents shoulder the blame. In the Ruby Ridge case, the Justice Department's inspector general's office opened a probe last year into allegations that senior FBI officials retaliated against agents who uncovered flaws in the bureau's handling of the siege. That probe is not expected to be completed before fall, sources said. The standoff in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, began with a shootout on Aug. 21, 1992, that resulted in the deaths of U.S. Marshal William Degan and Sammy Weaver, the young son of white separatist Randy Weaver. The next day, an FBI sniper killed Weaver's wife, Vicki, as the result of unprecedented shoot-to-kill orders that were later ruled illegal by a federal court. Most of the FBI supervisors who conducted a series of flawed inquiries into the case faced no disciplinary action and were promoted to senior jobs throughout the bureau, according to watchdog groups and others familiar with the case. A case in point, according to the whistleblower group, is the 1993 investigative team that included Harp and was led by FBI Inspector Robert E. Walsh. Seven senior members of the team were later promoted despite serious questions about their inquiry, Kolesnik's group charged in the letter to Mueller. A Senate subcommittee investigation found that Walsh's report, issued in 1994, was tilted to justify the shooting of Vicki Weaver. Later investigations found that the shoot-to-kill orders were issued by
