Sweeping measures to deal with terrorist attacks and other emergencies are to be announced this week, giving the Government power to over-ride civil liberties in times of crisis, and evacuate threatened areas, restrict people's movements and confiscate property.
If anything is a signature of al-Qa'ida, it is the staging of simultaneous attacks. From the September 2001 "spectacular" which targeted both towers of the World Trade Centre in New York as well as the Pentagon in Washington, ... the movement created by Osama bin Laden has sought to sow confusion and fear through the use of double strikes.
The rhetoric of a "war against terror" creates expectations that sooner or later it will end in victory, but it is impossible to foresee an end to a campaign against an adversary which has no negotiable demands, just a utopian vision of a medieval form of Islam ruling the world
MI5's role has been likened to that of a goalkeeper. No one will remember any of the shots that have been saved, only the one that gets into the goal, but so far it has let nothing past.
"The security services have made the environment as hostile as possible for terrorists," said a Whitehall insider. "But there is only so much you can do in a free society."
America hired agents, security officers and security engineers, and added physical security: barriers, blast walls, bollards, CCTV, street closures, bomb-detection equipment, vehicle inspections, shatter-resistant window film, armoured vehicles, alarms, video, public address, access cards and X-ray machines.
Intelligence relies on knowing about an organisation's intentions and its capabilities. Normally, it is intentions that are the hardest to judge, but al-Qa'ida has been very open about what it wants to do.
Michael Pillsbury, a Pentagon terrorism consultant, argued that the evolution of the terrorist groups is analogous to a process of corporate merger and acquisition. Regionally focused groups with their own agendas join with al-Qa'ida to learn their operational techniques or use their contacts, but are not subordinate to it.
Mr Blair said the right message to the terrorists was: "You are not going to defeat us because our will to defend what we believe is actually, in the end, stronger, better, more determined than your will to inflict damage on innocent people."
Turkish Top Military Brass meets Wolfowitz one day before Istanbul Attacks
And the Lord said: “George W. Bush was not sent by Me on any kind of mission whatsoever. He was not sent to remove Saddam, he was not sent to fight some axis of evil, and he was not supposed to be president. I have no clue how that one happened.”
The Horatio Alger myth, he says, leads us to believe that anyone in America can become rich. That’s why we refuse to tax the rich the way we should. We naively believe that we might become rich, too. “We bought into the drug, the lie, that we, too, could some day be rich. So we don’t want to do anything that could harm us on that day we end up millionaires.”
"History is propaganda about the past. Most historians don't tell the truth because they would be fired."
In the last two years, CNN has not devoted this much energy and coverage to any story in the manner that is unfolding right now. Enron, the stock market, the reasons for September 11, the nomination of Henry Kissinger to chair the investigation into that event, the disinformation that was pushed by the Bush administration before the attack on Iraq, the civilian casualties during the attack on Iraq, the American troop casualties during and after the attack on Iraq, the missing weapons of mass destruction, the missing Osama bin Laden, the war in Afghanistan that is far from over, the outing of a CIA agent by the Bush administration in an act of political revenge, and about two hundred other explosive stories did not get the attention that Michael Jackson is getting now.
For a while we had the Petersons to obsess the mainstream television media. Then we had Kobe Bryant, and for a bit both stories ran concurrently with 'Breaking News' announcements throughout daily coverage. Neither managed to seize national attention, and so periodically CNN and the other networks were forced to mention that the fighting in Iraq is getting a lot of Americans killed, the promised weapons of mass destruction have not been found, and no one but Dick Cheney can say that Iraq was involved in September 11 without looking like a total blithering idiot.
I suggest the epitaph for this entire era should be, "The fish rots from the head down." The latest round of corporate scandals -- Hollinger, the growing mutual fund mess and the foreign exchange dealers who ripped off their own companies -- provide an elegant summary of the pattern.
When Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested in Russia and his Yukos oil assets seized, the process represented far more than simple payback against the most powerful Zionist Jew in Moscow. At a single stroke, President Vladimir Putin ensured future Russian national security, consolidated several former republics of the old Soviet Union, and most important of all, eternally blocked Israel’s attempts to use “free” Yukos oil to drive its engines of war across the entire Middle East.
The Al Qaida spokesman noted that the bin Laden message would lead to tighter security, but that "no security measures would stop al-Qaida's plan."
The statement said that al-Qaida does not plan to attack Persian Gulf state: "Our targets are known and American. We will strike U.S. trade in the Gulf."
"We will not be content with the boycott. The big misfortune now is that many U.S. goods have had their market names changed into other names and local addresses and companies. They will be the targets of our strikes as part of our plans whose implementation has become imminent."
mred - fukk off.
So Rothschild,s decision to join the BSkyB board is all the more astonishing. Even people working with him in his office at RIT have been asking why he is doing it.
But the true extent of their relationship became muddied last week after reports that Khodorkovsky, who was jailed last week for fraud and tax evasion, had transferred his share stake in the event of arrest to Rothschild, who would act as a trustee.
Menatep's Yury Kotler has said Rothschild had no involvement but that the shares were held in trust by Leonid Nevzlin, himself a big Yukos investor, now in exile in Israel.
There aren't too many families like the Rothschilds that demonstrate so well the ability to pass on good genes. After all, they have been the power behind the throne of many a government since the family first arrived in Britain in the 1700s, emigrating from the Frankfurt ghettos.
A prominent financier argues that the heedless assertion of American power in the world resembles a financial bubble—and the moment of truth may be here. George Soros
George W. Bush did not have a clear mandate (he became President by virtue of a single vote in the Supreme Court)
The supremacist ideology of the Bush Administration stands in opposition to the principles of an open society, which recognize that people have different views and that nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth. The supremacist ideology postulates that just because we are stronger than others, we know better and have right on our side.
The doublespeak is needed because of the contradiction between the Bush Administration's concept of freedom and democracy and the actual principles and requirements of freedom and democracy.
many South Koreans regard the United States as a greater danger to their security than North Korea.
Under normal conditions misconceptions are self-correcting, and the markets tend toward some kind of equilibrium. Occasionally, a misconception is reinforced by a trend prevailing in reality, and that is when a boom-bust process gets under way. Eventually the gap between reality and its false interpretation becomes unsustainable, and the bubble bursts.
Exactly when the boom-bust process enters far-from-equilibrium territory can be established only in retrospect. During the self-reinforcing phase participants are under the spell of the prevailing bias. Events seem to confirm their beliefs, strengthening their misconceptions. This widens the gap and sets the stage for a moment of truth and an eventual reversal. When that reversal comes, it is liable to have devastating consequences. This course of events seems to have an inexorable quality, but a boom-bust process can be aborted at any stage, and the adverse effects can be reduced or avoided altogether. Few bubbles reach the extremes of the information-technology boom that ended in 2000. The sooner the process is aborted, the better.
Where are we in this boom-bust process? The deteriorating situation in Iraq is either the moment of truth or a test that, if it is successfully overcome, will only reinforce the trend.
We have put at risk not only our soldiers' lives but the combat effectiveness of our armed forces. Their morale is impaired, and we are no longer in a position to properly project our power. Yet there are more places than ever before where we might have legitimate need to project that power.
The terrorist attack on the United States could have been treated as a crime against humanity rather than an act of war. Treating it as a crime would have been more appropriate. Crimes require police work, not military action.
Imagine for a moment that September 11 had been treated as a crime. We would not have invaded Iraq, and we would not have our military struggling to perform police work and getting shot at.
Military action requires an identifiable target, preferably a state. As a result the war on terrorism has been directed primarily against states harboring terrorists. Yet terrorists are by definition non-state actors, even if they are often sponsored by states.
Military action should remain a last resort. The United States is currently preoccupied with issues of security, and rightly so. But the framework within which to think about security is collective security.
When a New York-bound Czech Airlines flight was diverted to land in Iceland after a bomb threat was e-mailed to the U.S. Embassy in Prague, no bomb was found – but, according to Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, two tons of machine-guns were discovered in the baggage hold.
''Who knows what terrorist group those were heading to in the States and what carnage we prevented from occurring in the U.S. by intercepting the delivery,'' said one U.S. military source
mr ed- indeed. who knows?
i havent seen this story elsewhere
The threat of a bomb on the civilian airliner was heightened because of the fact that President Bush's Air Force One was flying through the same airspace over Iceland at the same time in the opposite direction on his way to England.
mred - fukk off!
UK Muslims 'outraged' when asked to condemn terror
mr ed - im fukking outraged. shut the fuck up wnd.
A U.S. general in Iraq claims enemy attacks against coalition forces in the Baghdad area have dropped 70 percent since the launch of a tough new campaign known as "Operation Iron Hammer" on Nov. 12.
mr ed - im fukking outraged. shut the fuck up wnd.
Since Wednesday, however, there have been at least five attacks, mainly targeting Iraqis for their cooperation with coalition forces.
"If I can get the trust and confidence of the people of Baghdad that I am here for the reason they say I'm here – to provide a safe and secure environment so they can establish governance and move into the future – then God bless us all," Dempsey said. "And that's what I'm looking for."
mred - allah bless us all
DA has enough evidence 'to nail Jackson'
mred - this article leaves me speechless. rubba. rubbarubba.
"The boy told investigators about letters and poems and their precise location inside Michael's home. These letters were among the evidence seized, along with videotapes. They are very explicit and intimate and show a degree of familiarity. Basically, they appear to be love letters from Michael to the boy."
mred. im astonished. can i begin with the question about why mj's letters *to* the boy are at mjs house? and wot the fuk does ' " They are very explicit and intimate and show a degree of familiarity." mean? and why the tortured 'Basically, they appear to be love letters from Michael to the boy'?
Twelve-year-old cancer victim Gavin Arvizo
mred - they are using a 12 yearold cancer victim for this. its extraordinary.
The boy said, 'Michael told me he was my rubba rubba friend."'
mred - ok - lets point it out for everyone who hasnt picked up the sublimnable msg.
Gavin's mother, Janet Ventura, says Jackson encouraged the boy to call him "Daddy."
mred - thnkx gramma.
The warrant, based on allegations brought by the 12-year-old Arvizo, details a violation of Section 288(a) of the California Penal Code
mred - why the level of detail?
Jackson's legal team may be considering a plea bargain, said the report, such as an insanity defense, which could result in the "king of pop" spending time in a mental institution, rather than prison.
mred - and this is just priceless. i dont even need to comment.
me: can u imagine being this poor guy? its sufficiently difficult being weird when u r hidden.
didja happen to catch either of the 2 documentaries earlier this year? i didnt see em but the story behind them is fabulous.
mr ed - i wonder if the new royal baby was induced?
Poor Karl Rove. He spends close to two years meticulously staging photo ops and carefully crafting sound bites to create the image of President Bush as a take-charge, man-the-controls, land-the-jet-on-the-deck-of-the-aircraft carrier, "Bring 'em on" kind of leader.
Powell's UN speech came a mere eight days after Bush's State of the Union -- leaving one to wonder what the expiration date is on patently phony data? About a week after a president uses it, it turns out.
the question should be: What didn't the president know -- and why didn't he know it?
Whatever the opposite of "top secret" is, this was it.
Cherry-picking convenient lies about something as important as nuclear war is bad enough but the administration's attempts to spin the aftershocks have been even worse.
oining the still-don't-get-it unit were Don "Haldeman" Rumsfeld, who termed the president's speech "technically correct," and Ari "Ehrlichman" Fleischer who offered up this classic bit of spinsanity: "What we have said is it should not have risen to the level of a presidential speech. People cannot conclude that the information was necessarily false."
let me make myself perfectly clear: I'm not saying that Yellowcake-gate is the equivalent of Watergate. I'm saying it's potentially much, much worse.
President Clinton was impeached for seven words he should never have uttered: "I never had sex with that woman." What price will President Bush have to pay for his sixteen-word scam?
It has become increasingly obvious that there may be diabolical motives behind the intense push for antidepressant consumption. Antidepressants are immune suppressive, can cause violent tendencies, suicidal thoughts, depersonalization, complete changes in personality and depression, the very symptom these drugs are supposed to alleviate.
"A Yale study, which was released in March 1991, indicates that one out of seven of their patients suffered intense suicidal preoccupation or intense feelings of violence. They state very clearly, that from their observations, this is not a coincidence, but a reaction directly related to Prozac. If we use their one out of seven figure, or approximately 15%, we are looking at an astounding figure of 1,350,000 patients who are experiencing the most serious of Prozac's adverse reactions - adverse reactions which affect not only the patient but all of society."
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