-Caveat Lector- NewsMax.com How Many American Elite Does It Take to Screw In a Lightbulb? Diane Alden Oct. 18, 2001 Even while courage and American can-do are being exhibited and celebrated hither and yon among the common folk, America's evil, banal and stupid other self is still running true to form. In Washington, the bureaucrats, academe, politicos, celebrities, the media, and ninnies of various kinds -- our elite -- are once more showing us that America's "brightest and best" have a very difficult time learning life's lessons. We don't know our friends from our enemies. We marginalize Israel and turn a blind eye to a despotic ruling family in Saudi Arabia, which gives or launders money to the Taliban. When the royal house of Saudi crumbles, so will our interests there. The result will be a nearly catastrophic situation in which it will be war over oil as we fight the warriors of Islam here and abroad. It is no small deal that bin Laden and his minions are serious about American presence near the holy places of Mecca and Medina being one of the "root causes" of their hatred for the U.S. Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh tells us in a recent article in The New Yorker: "The American intelligence officials have been particularly angered by the refusal of the Saudis to help the F.B.I. and the C .I.A. run 'traces' -- that is, name checks and other background information -- on the nineteen men, more than half of them believed to be from Saudi Arabia, who took part in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon." "They knew that once we started asking for a few traces the list would grow," one former official said. "It's better to shut it down right away." Hersh points out that " thousands of disaffected Saudis have joined fundamentalist groups throughout the Middle East. Other officials said that there is a growing worry inside the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. that the actual identities of many of those involved in the attacks may not be known definitively for months, if ever. Last week, a senior intelligence official confirmed the lack of Saudi cooperation and told me, angrily, that the Saudis 'have only one constant -- and it's keeping themselves in power.' " Meanwhile, investigative journalist Paul Sperry reports that it's business as usual at America's small private airports. Flying is again allowed in and around our major cities. What is really truly weird is that as soon as the ban against flying out of private airports was lifted, 14 Syrians were allowed into the United States to take flying lessons. Syria, by the way, is listed as one of those nations that harbors terrorists. But we are giving their sons flying lessons. Why is that? Is it merely to make a buck? Or are we being a sympathetic ally in some phantom coalition we wish we had with Syria. Or is it because we are incompetent boobs who keep doing dumb things because no one is talking to anyone else and no one is really in charge? We are telling everyone we are a free nation for foreign residents, but on the other hand we seek to inflict heavy penalties on our legal citizens. We do that through hundreds of gun control laws even as we keep the door ajar for the odd terrorist who might slip in. So you thought now that we have Homeland Defense czar Tom Ridge we have nothing more to worry about? Try this on for size. According to the Washington Times, "Floyd Horn, administrator of the Agriculture Research Service, warned the food industry and farmers to watch for unusual plant and animal diseases because terrorists might resort to biological weapons that can infect and destroy them. "There are diseases that can wipe out our herds and crops," he said. How might those be spread? Could a number of pilots from Middle Eastern countries trained and HERE in the U.S. be the corn crop bombers, the dust off in the Central Valley, the wheat rot in Kansas, the cow deaths in Colorado? The government asks us to remain calm and go about our daily lives as usual. How can we do that when that same government can't do commonsense preventive measures -- like not allowing Middle Eastern men from countries that are acknowledged homes to terrorists to take flying lessons in the U.S.? One would think that the brain trust in D.C. would order a little more vigilance at the gates of the U.S., considering we are in a sorta kinda war? Think again. For every detainee that John Ashcroft talks about putting in federal detention, we are letting twice and three times that many into the U.S. right at this very moment. Did you know that since Sept. 11 there has been no change in our visa program and that the same laws still apply? Did you know that last year around 80,000 people came into the U.S. from Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Algeria, Libya and even Afghanistan? Did you know that up to 250,000 a year can get into and out of the United States from the Middle East? As Martin Gross states in his Washington Times piece, "The most generous visa is granted to citizens of Saudi Arabia, ostensibly our friend. It is for 'Multiple Use,' and valid for two years. It enables them to travel anywhere in the United States, even back and forth to Saudi Arabia." Did you know that most of the hijack terrorists held Saudi passports? Now we know that at least 14 Syrians are in a flight school somewhere in Middle America right at this very moment. The question becomes if we are in a crisis situation and serious about protecting Americans from attack from abroad, on our soil, using our facilities, shouldn't preventive measures be taken? Since the current attacks on the U.S. are coming from people of Middle Eastern background, wouldn't prudence require a commonsense move to halt easy-access visas until such time as the "war" against terrorism is at the very least slowed? In other words, we can no longer afford unlimited entry into a country at war until the system is cleaned up. The fact is that embassies and consulates abroad are supposedly understaffed and undertrained and not equipped to deal with visas and background checks that number in the hundreds of thousands. The commonsense thing would be to limit visa grants to manageable numbers, especially visas from countries where acts of terrorism are routine and which are known hideouts for international criminals. But when did common sense and prudence stop a government from shooting itself and us in the foot? Meanwhile, a 73-year-old grandmother is refused boarding on a flight out of O'Hare for possession of knitting needles. At the same time American airline pilots who are entrusted with hundreds of millions of dollars of potential flying bombs are not trusted to carry a firearm in the cockpit. While Tom Daschle tables the energy bill because it will open up the ANWR to oil drilling and we get yet another condescending lecture on how to be kind to Muslims -- America is not yet serious about fighting terrorism on any front. America hasn't quite figured it out yet -- perhaps because we have always thought we were invulnerable, like the Titanic, so that "not even God could sink it." But in fact we are an open society, a vulnerable society, which offers freedom and openness to those who have neither earned it by acquiring citizenship or entry to it as a privilege to be used in a non-lethal way. We don't face the fact that terrorists find homes here because they know they would be strung up in their own countries, countries which have less than shining human rights records. We have housed leaders of Hamas at institutions like the University of South Florida, where in October of 1995 a former member of the university's academic staff, Ramadan Abdallah Shallah, was named leader of Islamic Jihad, a terrorist organization. Then there was the case of Musa Abu Marzuq, who was arrested at Kennedy Airport in July 1995 on charges of murder and attempted murder for Hamas. At the time of his arrest, Abu Marzuq -- a permanent resident of the United States for five years -- headed a Washington-area think tank called the United Association for Studies and Research. According to the Middle Eastern Forum online, "From their places of exile in the West, the leadership of fundamentalist Islamic movements maintains daily contact with followers in the Middle East via facsimile transmissions, telephone conversations, and frequent visits of emissaries of the movement from their home countries. During the intifada, the Hamas movement's communiqués, for example, were jointly produced by Hamas activists in Gaza, who drafted the materials and then faxed them to Ahmad Bin Yusuf, a Hamas ideologue resident in Virginia, for his editing and approval." Some experts believe Middle Eastern terrorists are increasingly dependent on their U.S. allies. Hamas, for example, raises about one-third of its $30 million annual budget in this country and Europe, University of Illinois terrorism experts say. Terrorists have picked up the ways of the West and the Great Satan they deplore. They take on the structure of business corporations by locating them in countries they hate, then operate against the "moderate" Arab states like Egypt, Israel, and now the United States, which has housed them. They have been allowed to return to the United States and remain at large safely ensconced in the liberties they would deny to others if they could. They use charitable organizations as fronts and they cry bigotry and prejudice when one of theirs is singled out for investigation. Which leads me to the Immigration Act of 1965. Since that time people from the Third World have had a better shot at getting into the United States than at any previous time. That Act must be reformed. We are now home to some terrorist leaders who may have been citizens for decades. If that is the case, perhaps naturalizing citizens needs to be on condition citizenship is not abused through acts of terrorism or assisting terrorism here or abroad. We should not be granting permanent residency to terrorists. Even those terrorists who have done time in Israeli prisons or prisons in ANY country in the world for terrorism. That may separate the "freedom fighter" from the bad terrorist, but so be it. We should not be letting people into the country on any kind of visa unless they are thoroughly checked out, no matter how long it takes. We are fools to let these monsters come and go using us as a staging area for their terror around the world Deny citizenship in this country that allows terrorist leaders to hold a Western passport. The list of cases of operatives of Islamic fundamentalism or groups and rogue nation-states in the Middle East is alarming. Many have legally gained U.S. citizenship or acquired visas because our system is such a mess. In fact, some people who were U.S. citizens have done time in Israeli prisons for terrorism, as in the case of Mohammad Salah of Bridgeview, Ill. According to a story in the Oct. 31, 2000, Washington Post, "Salah, a U.S. citizen ... denied any links to violence. But American officials describe him as a 'high-level operative' for Hamas who financed armed attacks on Israelis. He served five years in an Israeli prison for alleged terrorist activities before returning last November to Chicago, where he had first moved from the Middle East in 1970 ... (F]BI says Salah also made several trips to the West Bank and Gaza to help a top Hamas leader named Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook, a longtime Fairfax County resident who was deported to Jordan in 1996. In hundreds of pages of public documents, the FBI has outlined a complex series of covert real estate deals it says were designed to launder $820,000 from a Saudi company to Hamas and where, according to Israeli officials, he taught Palestinian students how to make car bombs." Last year while campaigning, George W. Bush made inroads into the Muslim community. He told the leadership and others in that community that one of the things he would do if he were president would be to end the use of secret evidence in deportation hearings. But that stymies the FBI and federal agencies when they try and do their jobs. Deportation hearings are about people who do not have citizenship in the U.S. While they have rights as people and as human beings, they DO NOT have certain rights as citizens. If we don't get that situation straightened out ASAP, the "war" in Afghanistan will mean little but another American foreign adventure. America seems to have a difficult time when it involves common sense. Out of the hundreds of think tanks, policy groups, roundtables, congressional oversight committees, caucuses, talking heads, G-7 and G-8 meetings, weekends for the powers that be, coffee klatches and wine parties, NOTHING concrete or even vaguely smacking of common sense emerges. This is the same group of power brokers that wants us to trust it now. I would gamble there is more common sense in the locals at the City Cafe down the street from my house than in all the marble halls of D.C., the media empires, and the puffery of the high and the mighty. I am waiting for the powers that be to prove me wrong, but I am not holding my breath. I would suspect the firemen who died in the WTC horror and the young men of Flight 93 on an average day had more sense than an entire roomful of our "brightest and best." The reason is that they did what they had to do and there was no study or policy debate to find out what that was -- they just naturally did the RIGHT THING. Please check out www.aldenchronicles.com. I suggest reading "About What Is Hidden," an American expatriate's experiences in a Muslim country. You can write to me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Diane Alden is a research analyst with a background in political science and economics. Her work has appeared in the Washington Times as well as NewsMax.com, Enterstageright, American Partisan and many other online publications. She also does radio commentaries for Steve Myers' show on Liberty Works Monday and Friday mornings, and can be heard regularly on Mike Fleming, WREC in Memphis. Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics: War on Terrorism Return ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe simply because it has been handed down for many generations. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is written in Holy Scriptures. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of Teachers, elders or wise men. Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all. Then accept it and live up to it." The Buddha on Belief, from the Kalama Sutta + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller, German Writer (1759-1805) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Universal Declaration of Human Rights + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut." --- Ernest Hemingway
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is 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