World Trade Center (WTC)

Terrorist Attack
World Trade Center Towers Leveled After Planes Crash into Them; Pentagon Also Hit
Tuesday September, 2001
ABCNEWS' Geraldine Sealey, Dean Schabner, Michael McAuliff and Corey Goldman contributed to this report.
Sept. 11 — In a horrific sequence of terrorist violence, four U.S. passenger planes were apparently hijacked and crashed today, including two jets that flew into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, causing both to collapse.
...
Chronology of Destruction

The chaos began at about 8:50 a.m. ET when a hijacked American Airlines passenger plane smashed into the One World Trade Center, the northern tower. Then, at 9:04 a.m., another jet crashed into the southern tower, Two World Trade Center.

According to the FBI, the planes involved in the trade center crashes were American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 en route from Boston to Los Angeles carrying 81 passengers, nine flight attendants and two pilots, and United Airlines Flight 175, a Boeing 767 also headed from Boston to Los Angeles. Officials said the plane was carrying 56 passengers, two pilots and seven flight attendants.

At about 10 a.m., the southern tower collapsed, enveloping lower Manhattan in a cloud of dust, ash and debris. A half-hour later, the northern tower also fell in on itself.

"Lots of smoke and then the next thing I heard was an explosion in the building from the top, the south building just crumbled, just completely went down, I saw it," said witness Joan Fleischer. "It's hard to see all the pieces, but you could see it tipping over and just crashing to the ground."

World Trade Center Disaster — Tuesday, September 11, 2001
http://www.greatbuildings.com
The list of collapsed buildings (as confirmed by the New York Times through Saturday, 2001.0915) included all seven buildings of the World Trade center complex — including WTC 6, the U.S Customs House to the north; WTC 3, the 22 story Marriot World Trade Center hotel just west of Tower Two; and WTC 4 and 5, the Plaza Buildings to the east (although satellite images suggest much of WTC 5, the north Plaza Building, was still standing). Other nearby buildings were significantly damaged, including the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, and One Liberty Plaza, a 54 floor, 743' tall building across Church Street to the east.

 

Q:  Dajfamily, “Anyone have any spin on all this?“

A:  ghintp, Yes, I have a spin on it. Consider the following similarities. 
(Bear in mind that I anticipated a catastrophic event in New York three weeks prior to September 11, 2001 and tried to warn authorities.)

ONE HOUR

Easton's Bible Dictionary
Hour: First found in (Daniel 3:6; 4:19,33; 5:5) It is the rendering of the Chaldee shaah, meaning a "moment," a "look." It is used in the New Testament frequently to denote some determinate season (Matthew 8:13; Luke 12:39) With the ancient Hebrews the divisions of the day were "morning, evening, and noon-day" (Psalms 55:17) etc. The Greeks, following the Babylonians, divided the day into twelve hours. The Jews, during the Captivity, learned also from the Babylonians this method of dividing time. When Judea became subject to the Romans, the Jews adopted the Roman mode of reckoning time. The night was divided into four watches (Luke 12:38) (Matthew 14:25; 13:25) Frequent allusion is also made to hours (Matthew 25:13; 26:40) etc.  (See DAY)  An hour was the twelfth part of the day, reckoning from sunrise to sunset, and consequently it perpetually varied in length.

An overview of Babylonian mathematics
“The Babylonians had an advanced number system, in some ways more advanced than our present systems. It was a positional system with a base of 60 rather than the system with base 10 in widespread use today. For more details of the Babylonian numerals, and also a discussion as to the theories why they used base 60, see our article on Babylonian numerals.”

“The Babylonians divided the day into 24 hours, each hour into 60 minutes, each minute into 60 seconds. This form of counting has survived for 4000 years. To write 5h 25' 30", i.e. 5 hours, 25 minutes, 30 seconds, is just to write the sexagesimal fraction, 5 ²⁵/₆₀ ³⁰/₃₆₀₀.”
 

Bible – King James Version - Revelation 18

“Many are cashing out”
By Janet Kidd Stewart, Tribune staff reporter
Published September 22, 2001
“Indeed, many aren't waiting. Americans pulled $7.8 billion out of mutual funds on Monday and Tuesday alone, according to TrimTabs. The average daily outflow in August was $400 million. Mutual fund managers facing rising redemptions must sell stocks to gain liquidity.”

Flight From Stock Funds Continues
Redemptions at High Level but Keep With Pre-Attack Trend
By Albert B. Crenshaw
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 22, 2001; Page E01
“Money-market funds may be benefiting from new money that in the past might have gone into equity funds, he said. “

Republican-controlled Carlyle Group poses serious Ethical Questions for Bush Presidents, but Baltimore Sun ignores it
“All told, Carlyle has about 420 partners all over the globe, from Saudi princes to the former president of the Philippines. Its investments run heavily in the defense sector; they make money from military conflicts and weapons spending.”

    It's nice to see the mainstream media is finally catching up as of Time Magazine's July 1^st cover story.  Remember what kind of people were allowed to see the WTC devastation up close and who was allowed to view it from behind barricades blocks away.  The more wealthy, influential or powerful a person the more likely they are to see certain correlations between current events and Revelation.  The more likely they are to understand the truth the more likely they will fear the consequences of their own actions and the more likely they will begin telling the truth about their own lies (or at the very least stop telling new ones).  It's all rather brilliant, but would you expect.

Apocalypse Now
The biggest book of the summer is about the end of the world. It's also a sign of our troubled times
By NANCY GIBBS, Time Magazine, Posted Sunday, June 23, 2002; 2:31 a.m. EST
"The word apocalypse," he observes, "comes from a Greek word that literally means 'lifting of the veil.' In an apocalyptic age, people feel that the veil of normal, secular reality is lifting, and we can see behind the scenes, see where God and the devil, good and evil are fighting to control the future." To the extent that more people in the U.S. and around the world believe history is accelerating, that ancient prophecies are being fulfilled in real time, "it changes the way people feel about their circumstances, and the way they act.

"I would go for years without anyone asking about the End Times," says Thomas Tewell, senior minister of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in midtown Manhattan—hardly a hothouse of apocalyptic fervor. "But since Sept. 11, hard-core, crusty, cynical New York lawyers and stockbrokers who are not moved by anything are saying, 'Is the world going to end?', 'Are all the events of the Bible coming true?' They want to get right with God. I've never seen anything like it in my 30 years in ministry."

Matthew 19:24 :: King James Version (KJV)
"And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."
 

Q:  I've heard other people say that Chapter 18 does NOT refer to the incidents on September 11.  Why do you say they are?

A: Yes I've read a couple of rebuttals.  Their flaws lie in applying literal meaning to the words and events or attempting to argue within the confines of the bible itself.  The truth can not be found in any 'one' place.

    Ok, how about I try and backup my assertion that Chapter 18 refers to New York.  First of all it's important to repeat that both Genesis and Revelation are mostly written in the form of allegory, parable or koan.  The idea is to use that 1/4 of your brain that is intuition so that you can perceive the bigger picture.  Those books are written as mental exercises and anyone who tells you they "know" what they mean is probably taking their literal interpretation and attempting to impose it on you.  That said I will attempt to explain what I think they mean.  It does not mean I "know" the truth, it just means this is how I understand it and I encourage everyone reading them to use their own brain, look around the world at current events and interpret the content yourself.

    Besides the exercise of the cognitive function of intuition the other poorly understood function is "feeling" or what I prefer to call "subjective reasoning".  The bible I believe is written predominantly for, and appeals to, right brain thinkers (N & F).  That's why it had little meaning to me prior to enlightenment.  The subjective reasoning function is exercised when the point of view or perspective of the speaker or subject changes.  This technique is done frequently in many passages of the bible.  For example in the following verses from Matthew many people get lost when considering who is actually speaking and who actually is witnessing what.  It should also be noted that whenever "like" is used in statements such as, "descending like a dove" it can be assumed that the author does not know what they are looking at or what was actually witnessed.  Instead they are attempting to describe something with words from their language and experience.

    On the Yahoo Bible Prophecies club someone posted that they thought the "her" in verses such as 18:11 referred to the Statue of Liberty.  The pronoun "her" is often used for objects that have been manufactured, especially ships such as aircraft and sea vessels that a crew depend on (just like children depend on their mother).  It seems reasonable to refer to a city as a she (sister cities) and yes also the more obvious representation of the Statue of Liberty.  I think the following passage in 18:02 refers to both the statue and the city, "and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird."  If you attempt to refrain from applying your own values to the words you can see the similarities to the description of this "Babylon" with the inscription at the Statue of Liberty,

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

Q:  But what about Revelation 18:11, "for no man buyeth their merchandise any more"?  While the US stock market was down the week after the attack it has been closing up for the past several weeks.

A:  Yes well the market can go "up" for several reasons. 

    Consider that during the market crash in 1929 there were some very wealthy investors that attempted to "prop" up the market by buying large quantities of shares as the prices plummeted.  By purchasing these shares they were hoping to convince others that these shares had value.  Remember how panicked the market pundits looked and sounded the days the market was closed following the attack on 9/11?  Those in positions of power were watching the public cueing up sell orders on-line.  Did they report that they were watching us and in collusion figuring out a way to manipulate the situation to their benefit?  Well, consider the following;

$100B stimulus possible - Greenspan, Rubin, Senate leaders discuss huge boost for economy
September 25, 2001: 2:31 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (CNNfn) - A closed-door meeting between Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and the Senate Finance Committee to discuss the health of the U.S. economy Tuesday included talk about an economic stimulus package of about $100 billion.

Greenspan and Rubin met privately with the Senate Finance Committee to discuss ways to help the economy in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington that destroyed the World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon and killed thousands.

Greenspan and Rubin agreed that any economic stimulus package Congress passes should be big enough to be effective -- namely, 1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), or about $100 billion.

    A lot of attention is paid to the Federal Reserve Bank's interest rate cuts.  Not as much attention is paid to the money they actually lend.  The Fed immediately began "pumping" (printing, and lending) billions of dollars into the market in the days after 9/11.  This is called creating "liquidity" in the market.  Well guess who gets that money at such low lending rates, your corner grocery store merchant?  No, large banks and other lending institutions get it.  They then lend it to other large companies at higher rates and then they all purchase stock in order to prop the prices up.  In addition, for at least the first couple of weeks the SEC eliminated the restrictions placed on the buying and selling of stock by companies and insiders.  Why do you suppose the "financial services" industries posted the biggest gains following this manipulation?  Those speculating are assuming that the ruse will work, people will purchase those shares in their 401k, IRA, etc. and the banks will make a tidy profit from being at the top of the food chain.  When the Fed sells bonds to raise capital to lend, who pays the interest on that borrowed money?  Why the taxpayer of course.  Losses must be socialized and profit privatized.  Free market capitalism?  Where?

Federal Reserve Functions - Supervising Banks
“Perhaps the most important supervisory responsibility of all, however, is to respond to a financial crisis by acting as lender of last resort for the nation's banking system. Through its "discount window," the Fed lends money to banks so that a shortage of funds at one institution does not disrupt the flow of money and credit in the entire banking system. Typically, the Fed makes loans to satisfy a bank's unanticipated needs for short-term funds. But the Fed also makes longer-term loans to help banks manage seasonal fluctuations in their customers' deposit or credit demands.”

Fedpoint 18: The Discount Window
“Through the discount window, Federal Reserve Banks lend funds to depository institutions. All depository institutions that maintain transaction accounts or nonpersonal time deposits subject to reserve requirements are entitled to borrow at the discount window. This includes commercial banks, thrift institutions, and United States branches and agencies of foreign banks. Prior to the passage of the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980, discount window borrowing generally had been restricted to commercial banks that were members of the Federal Reserve System.”

“The Fed does not loosen or tighten its discount window administration policies when it loosens or tightens monetary policy. In 1999, however, the Fed did liberalize its discount window policy in anticipation of possible Y2K-related liquidity strains in the economy. From October 1, 1999, through April 7, 2000, it established a special liquidity facility that borrowers could use without having to first seek credit elsewhere. Following the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center in September 2001, the Fed again encouraged depository institutions needing liquidity to borrow from the discount widow. Reserve Banks lent $45.5 billion to depository institutions on September 12, 2001, the record for a single day.”

Stocks Plummet as Wall Street Reopens
Dow Off 685; Fed Cuts Rates In Effort to Contain Losses
Tuesday, September 18, 2001; Page A01

The Dow's 684.81-point plunge, its biggest point loss in history, came despite an unprecedented bid by the Bush administration, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street executives and major U.S. corporations to prop up the market in the hopes of sending a message that the U.S. financial system could shrug off the terrorist assault.

Amid record volume of more than 2.37 billion shares on the New York Stock Exchange, the selling pressure gathered momentum throughout the day, despite several pledges by companies to buy their own stock and exhortations by top U.S. policymakers, notably Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill, who took the extraordinary step of predicting on television that the market would soon be headed for new records.

The outcome might have been much worse, analysts said, had it not been for moves such as the Securities and Exchange Commission's easing of rules on corporate stock buybacks.

"People are saying, 'Where is that patriotic rally?' " said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Jefferies & Co., a Los Angeles-based institutional brokerage firm. "We're seeing it. It's just happening at a lower level, happening as support. The combined effort between Wall Street, companies, the Fed, the SEC -- that's why we're only down 7 percent."

The SEC, in a first-ever use of emergency powers granted after the 1987 market crash, suspended rules that limit the degree to which companies can buy their own shares -- and about 75 corporations reportedly responded, among them General Electric, Cisco Systems, Intel and United Parcel Service.

U.S. Treasuries rise, defying massive note sale
NEW YORK, Dec 27 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasuries rose at midmorning on Thursday despite a record-sized auction of two-year notes looming later in the session, as the market received a technical boost in very thin trade.

Treasuries had slipped in early trade, suffering a fourth day of declines ahead of the Treasury Department's $23 billion auction of new two-year notes, a record amount and an increase of $2 billion from what was a poorly received auction in November. New debt supply typically depresses prices.

Greenspan Warns on Asian Bank Buying
Tue, Mar 02, 2004
By Victoria Thieberger
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on Tuesday issued his strongest warning yet about Asian central bank purchases of U.S. assets, saying it could raise problems for the economies of China and Japan.

He said "extraordinary" Asian central bank buying of dollar assets had totaled almost $240 billion since the start of 2002, describing the size of Japan's purchases as "awesome."

The central banks of China and Japan have been heavy buyers of U.S. assets to park the proceeds from selling their own currencies to try to prevent them from rising against the dollar and so hurting their exports.
…
To finance this intervention, the central banks are essentially printing money which then floods their domestic economies, threatening inflation, Greenspan suggested.

Japanese monetary authorities bought almost $100 billion in January and February in their efforts to prevent the yen from rising rapidly and damaging the nation's export-led recovery.

Much of the money has found its way into U.S. Treasuries, and is widely thought to be supporting the U.S. bond market and keeping yields lower than they would otherwise be.
 

    Since many large companies have been purchasing their own stock in an effort to prop up the value if they actually report it honestly (don't trust pro forma numbers) then you should expect some miserable earnings estimates in the weeks and months ahead as revenue continues to slide, the world wide public does not purchase their stock from them, and they are left with the interest payments on the money they borrowed to buy their own stock.

    The important point here is that in these end days the power structure is turned upside down.  In the past the general public typically bares the brunt of the problems and those in power sit back pulling the strings.  Well now the public is generally unaware of what is going on in the market but those in power know exactly how horrible things look.  This gradual dissolving of wealth is actually a psychologically generous part of the plan.  I don't think the intention is to yank the rug out from anyone so fast that they become suicidal.

(Some additional information on this sub-topic can be found here.)

Q:  But the US is a great country.  How can you say bad things about it?

A:  My goal is to explain the truth as I understand it.  Unfortunately the mass media in the US nearly always avoids the truth so the public is left with a very distorted and unrealistic view of the country and world they live in.  In the book that this website is named after the protagonist Lazarus says the two most artistic ways to lie are 1. To tell truthful things but not the whole truth and 2. Tell the truth but in a way that people think you are lying.

It's true there are lots of wonderful things about this country.  Personally I'm currently quite comfortable at the moment.  I am unable however to ignore all of the lies, deceptions, cruelty and mistreatment conducted by certain individuals and organizations that are also members of this country, particularly those who claim to represent me and my beliefs.  Citizens should make up their own minds after consuming material from a variety of sources (hopefully by reading) and thinking critically.  Again I expect anyone reading what I write to be skeptical and attempt to refute my claims if they find reason to.  But please think for yourself.

Consider the content below that I previously posted to the Yahoo! INTJ club around the end of September.

I’ve not interested myself in politics for the past 12 years. I stopped when I had read enough about the relationships between money, power and death. I realized that if an organization, individual or country threatens the financial interest of the quiet but powerful elite they will be killed. Of course this kind of activity involves the United States. In fact I believe it highly likely the US government performs the majority of it. After learning this I decided to stay out of it all together and instead focus on communication technologies that would replace the increasingly concentrated corporate media. I foresaw the Internet 6 years before ARPANET was opened up and foresaw the need long before that. I’ve been working with computers for about 20 years. How many here used BBS (Bulletin Board Systems) and CompuServe? Source?

I believe the US government won’t (can’t) appeal to an impartial international court in identifying and trying individuals because that would expose its own activities to international scrutiny. Instead it makes political and financial deals with leaders of other countries that are willing to cooperate. This is not unlike how the Mafia operates. Like I said my research in this area is more than a decade old but here is some of what I remember reading. Obviously if I’m going to make such statements I need to support them.
 

1.  The FBI has conducted (probably still does) COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program). They have used them against peaceful socialist groups in the past. FBI members join the organizations and disrupt them from within by instigating violence and reporting their activities to law enforcement.  (Also consider environmental and free trade groups and demonstrations.)

2.  The US government has been found guilty of breaking international law by an international court for activities such as mining Nicaragua’s harbors with explosives. The US government ignored the ruling and paid no reparations. The US also voted in the minority with Israel in the UN far more often than even the USSR.

3.  I believe the US government and the defense industry sells more arms annually worldwide than any other country. In fact there is international competition in this market. Each weapons manufacturer trying to maintain and increase its market share in all countries including poor and developing ones. This is a VERY large market. A market of death. These governments and leaders of industry have no financial interest in finding peaceful resolution to problems. Think I’m wrong, then suggest publicly that the same financial investigation being performed to track “terrorists” be expanded to include sales and finances of ALL arms trades. As my hero Noam Chomsky puts it, “All states are inherently violent”.

4.  The US has trained and supplied arms to many of the governments and people it now calls terrorists. It supplied Iraq with weapons for its 10 year war with Iran prior to the gulf war.  It supplied arms to Iran before that war.  There were US made weapons used on both sides of operation Desert Storm.

5.  Lies. I heard a lecture from John Stockwell who headed CIA activities in Angola for a time. He said it was common practice for the CIA to prepare three different lies the day before an operation so that depending how the operation actually turned out they would submit the most helpful lie. He said the truth had NOTHING to do with what they communicated.

6.  I used to know valid statistics about corporate media monopoly. With the M&A of the past few years suffice it to say corporate media is much more concentrated then it ever was. Only unrestricted information resources like the Internet are of real value in finding any truth. Of course there’s a lot of crap on the Internet too so unlike being spoon-fed by television you have to use your brain.

It’s too bad so many people can’t tell the difference between a truth and a lie. I think they can if they look honestly inside themselves. One thing I learned at a conference on personality type is that once people know their type they become aware that there are individuals in other countries (even ones they are at war with) that think more like they do then their own next door neighbor.  Are we going to keep killing for them?

Q:  How about you back some of that up?

A:  Ok.

COINTELPRO is an acronym for the FBI's domestic "counterintelligence programs" to neutralize political dissidents. Although covert operations have been employed throughout FBI history, the formal COINTELPRO's conducted between 1956-1971 were broadly targeted against radical political organizations.

What Was Cointelpro?
"COINTELPRO" was the FBI's secret program to undermine the popular upsurge which swept the country during the 1960s. Though the name stands for "Counterintelligence Program," the targets were not enemy spies. The FBI set out to eliminate "radical" political opposition inside the US. When traditional modes of repression (exposure, blatant harassment, and prosecution for political crimes) failed to counter the growing insurgency, and even helped to fuel it, the Bureau took the law into its own hands and secretly used fraud and force to sabotage constitutionally-protected political activity. Its methods ranged far beyond surveillance, and amounted to a domestic version of the covert action for which the CIA has become infamous throughout the world.

How Do We Know About It?
COINTELPRO was discovered in March, 1971, when secret files were removed from an FBI office and released to news media. Freedom of Information requests, lawsuits, and former agents' public confessions deepened the exposure until a major scandal loomed. To control the damage and re-establish government legitimacy in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, Congress and the courts compelled the FBI to reveal part of what it had done and to promise it would not do it again . . .

How Did It Work?
The FBI secretly instructed its field offices to propose schemes to "misdirect, discredit, disrupt and otherwise neutralize "specific individuals and groups. Close coordination with local police and prosecutors was encouraged. Final authority rested with top FBI officials in Washington, who demanded assurance that "there is no possibility of embarrassment to the Bureau." More than 2000 individual actions were officially approved. The documents reveal three types of methods:

1. Infiltration: Agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. Their main function was to discredit and disrupt. Various means to this end are analyzed below.
2. Other forms of deception: The FBI and police also waged psychological warfare from the outside -- through bogus publications, forged correspondence, anonymous letters and telephone calls, and similar forms of deceit.
3. Harassment, intimidation and violence: Eviction, job loss, break-ins, vandalism, grand jury subpoenas, false arrests, frame-ups, and physical violence were threatened, instigated or directly employed, in an effort to frighten activists and disrupt their movements. Government agents either concealed their involvement or fabricated a legal pretext. In the case of the Black and Native American movements, these assaults -- including outright political assassinations -- were so extensive and vicious that they amounted to terrorism on the part of the government.

Murder, Inc.
John Stockwell is the highest-ranking CIA official ever to leave the agency and go public. He ran a CIA intelligence-gathering post in Vietnam, was the task-force commander of the CIA's secret war in Angola in 1975 and 1976, and was awarded the Medal of Merit before he resigned. Stockwell's book In Search of Enemies, published by W.W. Norton 1978, is an international best-seller. This is a transcript of a lecture he gave in June, 1986.

What I found with all of this study is that the subject, the problem, if you will, for the world, for the U.S. is much, much, much graver, astronomically graver, than just Angola and Vietnam. I found that the Senate Church committee has reported, in their study of covert actions, that the CIA ran several thousand covert actions since 1961, and that the heyday of covert action was before 1961; that we have run several hundred covert actions a year, and the CIA has been in business for a total of 37 years.

What we're going to talk about tonight is the United States national security syndrome. We're going to talk about how and why the U.S. manipulates the press. We're going to talk about how and why the U.S. is pouring money into El Salvador, and preparing to invade Nicaragua; how all of this concerns us so directly. I'm going to try to explain to you the other side of terrorism; that is, the other side of what Secretary of State Shultz talks about. In doing this, we'll talk about the Korean war, the Vietnam war, and the Central American war.

...

Now how do you teach torture? Dan Metrione: `I can teach you about torture, but sooner or later you'll have to get involved. You'll have to lay on your hands and try it yourselves.'

.... All they [the guinea pigs, beggars from off the streets] could do was lie there and scream. And when they would collapse, they would bring in doctors and shoot them up with vitamin B and rest them up for the next class. And when they would die, they would mutilate the bodies and throw them out on the streets, to terrify the population so they would be afraid of the police and the government.

And this is what the CIA was teaching them to do. And one of the women who was in this program for 2 years - tortured in Brazil for 2 years - she testified internationally when she eventually got out. She said, `The most horrible thing about it was in fact, that the people doing the torture were not raving psychopaths.' She couldn't break mental contact with them the way you could if they were psychopath. They were very ordinary people....

 

Arms Trade is one way to prevent basic rights
The Arms Trade is a major cause of human rights abuses, with some governments spending more on the sale of arms than on social development, communications infrastructure and health combined. As this transcript shows, the American tax payer pays about $7 Billion per year to subsidise arms sales which the arms contractors maintain as essential to foster good relations and also create more jobs at home (yet when it comes to funding new weapons development, the rationale for this is because so many countries have sophisticated weapons! Also, when a sale is made there are often other economic incentives, such as moving the manufacture of these and other weapons abroad, therefore not really creating jobs in the US.).

On military in general, the USA spends more than the rest of the G7 countries combined -- approximately $270 Billion, annually. In 1997 alone, half of USA's aid was related to military aid/trade -- and most of that was to countries that are already wealthy, like Israel, whereas very poor countries like Sub-Saharan African nations received very little...

The arms trade is the largest business in the world at 800 Billion dollars, annually.

The West sells a lot of these arms to military dictatorships, to many human rights violators or corrupt governments, often secretly and with training. These sales and training provisions therefore become tools to control and prevent any form of democracy as Noam Chomsky points out.

Some of the worst countries that sell these arms are USA and Britain, which do the largest and second largest amount of arms trade in the world, respectively -- in the name of democracy, of course!

 

Arms Around the World
Early on, Clinton required our diplomats to shill for arms merchants to their host countries. The results were immediate: During Clinton's first year in office, U.S. arms sales more than doubled. From 1993 to 1997, the U.S. government sold, approved, or gave away $190 billion in weapons to virtually every nation on earth.

To examine the Clinton administration's eagerness to arm the world, the MoJo Wire has compiled a detailed look at America's top weapons customers during the Clinton years, tallying their total 1993-97 purchases through both the Pentagon (so-called "Foreign Military Sales," or FMS) and U.S. manufacturers ("Direct Commercial Sales," or DCS).

What we found is that while the U.S. obviously sells weapons to NATO countries and relatively democratic allies like Japan and South Korea, it also has a nasty habit of arming both sides in a conflict, as well as countries with blighted democracy or human-rights records, like Indonesia, Colombia, and Saudi Arabia.

All of this might be justified as a way to maintain a strong manufacturing job-base in the U.S., but some of these sales actually result in jobs being shipped abroad -- while arms manufacturers get tax breaks for merging, resulting in further layoffs here at home.
 

1. "The Unsettling Specter of Peace"
The "Unsettling Specter of Peace" raises "knotty `peace' questions," the Wall Street Journal observes.1 Crucially, it threatens the regular resort to the military Keynesian programs that have served as the major device of state economic management through the postwar years. The Journal quotes former Army chief of staff General Edward Meyer, who thinks that a more capital-intensive and high tech military will ensure "a big business out there for industry": robot tanks, unmanned aircraft, sophisticated electronics, all of dubious use for any defensive (or probably any) military purpose, but that is not the point. It is, however, a rather lame hope; how will the public be bludgeoned into paying the costs, without a plausible Red Menace on the horizon?
 

The following is a transcript of Noam Chomsky's
October 2 appearance in the MSNBC chatroom hosted by Will Femia.
Question from Stephanie Daniels: Are the international courts a real option for the US now? If the US recognized their legitimacy and jurisdiction, would someone (US military? UN forces?) be authorized to go into Afghanistan and arrest bin Laden even without hard evidence.

Noam Chomsky: Not without evidence of course. Even NATO countries say they can't proceed without evidence. And nobody really knows if it happens to be Bin Laden. But yes, the courts are certainly available. Now, the international criminal court, unfortunately, we cannot approach because the U.S. has refused to recognize its jurisdiction. But there is the world court, and if the U.S. wanted, it could set up a special court the same way that it was done for Yugoslavia. There is also the UN Security Council which can initiate forceful actions if it is presented with serious reasons.

We should remember that there are real precedents for this. The most obvious, because it is supported by a World Court decision and UN Security Council resolution, the highest authorities. Twenty years ago the United States launched a war against Nicaragua. That was a terrible war. Tens of thousands of people died. The country was practically destroyed. Nicaragua did not respond by setting off bombs in Washington. They went to the World Court with a case, the World Court ruled in their favor and ordered the United States to stop its "unlawful use of force" (that means international terrorism) and pay substantial reparations. Well, the United States responded by dismissing the court with contempt and immediately escalated the attack. At that point Nicaragua went to the UN Security council which voted a resolution calling on all states to obey international law. They didn't mention anyone, but everyone knew they meant the United States. Well, the United States vetoed it. Nicaragua then went to the General Assembly which, two years in a row passed a similar resolution with only the United States and Israel opposed. El Salvador in one year. But of course, the United States is a very powerful country. If it opposes lawful means, they can't be pursued. So Nicaragua could do nothing. On the other hand, if the U.S. pursued those means no one would stop it. In fact, everyone would support it.
 

The Media Monopoly
In the last 5 years, a small number of the country's largest industrial corporations has acquired more public communications power-including ownership of the news-than any private businesses have ever before possessed in world history.

Nothing in earlier history matches this corporate group's power to penetrate the social landscape. Using both old and new technology, by owning each other's shares, engaging in joint ventures as partners, and other forms of cooperation, this handful of giants has created what is, in effect, a new communications cartel within the United States.

At issue is not just a financial statistic, like production numbers or ordinary industrial products like refrigerators or clothing. At issue is the possession of power to surround almost every man, woman, and child in the country with controlled images and words, to socialize each new generation of Americans, to alter the political agenda of the country. And with that power comes the ability to exert influence that in many ways is greater than that of schools, religion, parents, and even government itself.

Perhaps the most troubling power of the new cartel is its control of the main body of news and public affairs information. The reporting of news has always been a commercial enterprise and this has always created conflicts of interest. But the behavior of the new corporate controllers of public information has produced a higher level of manipulation of news to pursue the owners' other financial and political goals. In the process, there has been a parallel shrinkage of any sense of obligation to serve the non-commercial information needs of public citizenship.

The idea of government interceding to protect consumers is contrary to the ideology of most of the media cartel's leaders, who with few exceptions, pursue the conservative political and economic notion of an uninhibited free market that operates without social or moral obligations.

At the time of the first edition of this book, in 1983, the biggest media merger in history was a $340-million matter, when the Gannett Company, a newspaper chain, bought Combined Communications Corporation, an owner of billboards, newspapers, and broadcast stations. In 1996, when Disney merged with ABC/Cap Cities, it was a $19-billion deal-fifty-six times larger. This union produced a conglomerate that is powerful in every major mass medium: newspapers, magazines, books, radio, broadcast television, cable systems and programming, movies, recordings, video cassettes, and, through alliances and joint ventures, growing control of the golden wires into the American home-telephone and cable.

But the quantity of money involved is the least disturbing measure of events. More ominous is how this degree of concentrated control translates into the power to shape the country's political and economic agendas, to create models of behavior for each generation, and to achieve ever more aggressive, self-serving access to every level of government.

"And I think all of us have a sense if we imagine the kind of world we would face if the people who bombed the mess hall in Mosul, or the people who did the bombing in Spain, or the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania and attacked the Pentagon, the people who cut off peoples' heads on television to intimidate, to frighten -- indeed the word "terrorized" is just that. Its purpose is to terrorize, to alter behavior, to make people be something other than that which they want to be."
- DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, Surprise Trip for Donald Rumsfeld; Interview With Brigadier General James Marks; Christian in Iraq, Aired December 24, 2004 - 12:00 ET

    If you want another example of US Government lies, relationship to terrorism and cover-up consider how the US government has handled the destruction of two passenger airline flights, TWA flight 800 and AA flight 587.  Note that NewsMax has an overt  Republican bias but they apparently have no trouble challenging a primarily Republican administration concerning the evidence and how the cases are handled.  I myself watched the Flight 587 cover-up unfold as news broadcasters interviewed eyewitnesses on the ground report the plane exploding in the air.  Thirty minutes later 'officials' were available to be interviewed and they immediately began discounting the possibility that there was an explosion and started spinning their official version of reality.

Flight 587 Eyewitnesses Insist Explosion Came Before Tail Broke Off
Monday, Dec. 3, 2001 11:07 a.m. EST
"Two eyewitnesses to the Nov. 12 crash of American Airlines Flight 587 said over the weekend that investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board are wrong to focus on potential structural defects as the cause of the disaster - insisting instead that the plane's tail came off over New York's Jamaica Bay only after it exploded in a fireball."

FBI Sitting on Flight 587 Videotape
Friday, Nov. 16, 2001 11:07 a.m. EST
"A videotape that could show exactly what happened to American Airlines Flight 587, which crashed three minutes after taking off from New York's JFK airport on Monday, is in the hands of the FBI - but the bureau has thus far declined to release it."

Flight 587 Witnesses Charge Cover-Up
Monday, Jan. 7, 2002 11:03 a.m. EST
"Dozens of eyewitnesses to the Nov. 12 crash of American Airlines Flight 587 now say the government is ignoring their claims that the Airbus 300 exploded in midair before breaking up minutes after takeoff at New York's JFK airport."

Second Video of Flight 587 Casts Doubt on Crash Probe
Sunday, Jan. 27, 2002 3:01 p.m. EST
"News that a second tollbooth video camera captured doomed American Airlines Flight 587's breakup moments after its Nov. 12 takeoff from New York's JFK airport raises new questions about the candor and thoroughness of investigators conducting the probe into the disaster."

Time.com reported Sunday that National Transportation Safety Board investigators "last week got their first look at a remarkable videotape of the deadly accident."

Time adds, "This is the second video record the board has obtained of the crash, but the first one was virtually useless because the plane could be seen only as a tiny speck."

"In reality, both traffic surveillance videotapes - shot from toll-booths on causeways that cross New York's Jamaica Bay (adjacent to JFK) - were reportedly turned over to crash probers within four days of the disaster."
 

    Now in March 2002 we learn that security in U.S. airports could have easily allowed a passenger to board with a bomb.  The undercover tests were conducted while the airports were on the 'highest' state of alert.  Apparently the executive administration asked for and is using this report to justify taking over airline security.

Knives, guns, fake bombs elude airport security
March 26, 2002 Posted: 9:54 AM EST (1454 GMT)
In hundreds of undercover tests conducted between November and February, security screeners missed 70 percent of knives, 60 percent of simulated explosive devices, and 30 percent of guns. Overall, screeners failed 48 percent of the time.

The tests were run by the inspector general of the Transportation Department following a November 9 order from the White House.

Results of the tests have not been released, but a government source confirmed the details, first published Monday by USA Today.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the findings showed why the federal government decided to take over the airport security system.

In cases where investigators sought to bypass security to gain access to the tarmac or to secretly board an aircraft, they succeeded 48 percent of the time.

Former FAA security chief Billie Vincent told The Associated Press the report was not surprising, considering the checkpoints were staffed by the same low-paid, poorly trained screeners who were there before September 11.

In addition, Vincent said, current equipment cannot detect explosives, nor can it detect many varieties of cutting tools.

"The technology at the screening points is not there," Vincent said. "The current metal detectors won't do the job. If you turn it high enough to detect that much metal, you will have an alarm on every person going through."
 

    Here are some links concerning TWA flight 800.  You may recall the 'official' conclusion was that an electrical surge of unknown origin caused the fuel sensor in one of the tanks to ignite the fuel.  Consider who wrote the investigative article below, Cmdr. William S. Donaldson, III - USN, Ret. and check out his impressive credentials. Not exactly your typical conspiracy theorist. Pondering the reasons why the US government would cover-up such an incident the way they did is the most fascinating part of the story.  Without more evidence we can only speculate and I believe they obscure the truth in order to minimize the negative effects on the airline industry and to direct attention away from their criminal political activities.  The events of September 11, 2001 however were a bit too obvious to cover-up.

TWA Flight 800 Disaster: Cover-up?
"Gentlemen,
Over the last four months our investigation into the loss of TWA
Flight 800 has produced information far surpassing that contained
in our July 20, 1998 Interim Report to Congress. We can now
prove, before a jury or other independent fact-finding body, that
the aircraft was shot down. We can also explain why the
Administration covered it up and expose some of the methods they
employed to do so."
...

TWA Investigator Donaldson Dies
Thursday, Aug. 23, 2001
"Cmdr. William S. Donaldson, a nationally recognized investigator in the crash of TWA Flight 800, died of a brain tumor Wednesday in St. Mary’s County, Md."

    Note in the following NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) conclusions that they didn't even determine where they thought the surge would have initiated.  I have a little more faith in fuel tank engineers than to think they would design a system with wiring that would ignite the fuel. If they were designed this way then have all airlines replaced the fuel tanks and fuel quantity indication systems and all the electrical systems outside of the CWT that 'could' cause a surge on 'all' 747s?  I don't remember the recall nor is one recommended in these conclusions.

NTSB Identification: DCA96MA070 .
"The investigation revealed that the crash occurred as the result of a fuel/air explosion in the airplane's center wing fuel tank (CWT) and the subsequent in-flight breakup of the airplane. The investigation further revealed that the ignition energy for the CWT explosion most likely entered the CWT through the fuel quantity indication system wiring; neither the ignition energy release mechanism nor the location of the ignition inside the CWT could be determined from the available evidence. There was no evidence of a missile or bomb detonation. "

"An explosion of the center wing fuel tank (CWT), resulting from ignition of the flammable fuel/air mixture in the tank. The source of ignition energy for the explosion could not be determined with certainty, but, of the sources evaluated by the investigation, the most likely was a short circuit outside of the CWT that allowed excessive voltage to enter it through electrical wiring associated with the fuel quantity indication system. "
 

NTSB Destroys Incriminating Evidence
Dec. 14, 2001
"The NTSB denies that it kept the demolition secret, but it's clear that it did so. It knew that there were many people interested in the TWA 800 case who would have strenuously objected to the destruction of evidence that they believed would prove the NTSB and FBI had covered up the real cause of the crash – hits by missiles that were seen by hundreds of eyewitnesses."
 

For additional citations of political and ethical corruption within the United States please review this document or the Politics section of this site.

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."
- attributed to George Washington, 1st US President

"When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, 'This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives.”
- Robert A. Heinlein

“When they lose their sense of awe,
people turn to religion.
When they no longer trust themselves,
they begin to depend upon authority.

Therefore the Master steps back
so that people won’t be confused.
He teaches without a teaching,
so that people will have nothing to learn.”
- Lao-tzu , Tao-te ching “The Book of the Way and Its Power”
A New English Version by Stephen Mitchell
 

Every American, proud or otherwise should oppose terrorism regardless of who sponsors it.  The most democratic thing you can do is to educate yourself.

"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
- Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:278

Giuliani to U.N.: Hold Nations Accountable on Terror
"Look at that destruction, that massive, senseless cruel loss of human life. And then I ask you to look in your hearts and recognize that there is no room for neutrality on the issue of terrorism. You're either with civilization or with terrorists,'' he said."

AN ANTIDOTE FOR FEELINGS OF DISCOURAGEMENT FROM SEPTEMBER 11

After years of preparatory work, on August 13, 2001, Motion Sciences Organization was launched. Along with our launch, we released a special online movie—ENGAGE—presenting the context and vision of our Mission. ENGAGE can be downloaded at:

http://motionsciences.org/engage/vision.movie.html.

(If the Motion Sciences site is not available you may download the low-res version of the video from here (right-click link and choose "Save Target As..."). The Quicktime player is available here.)

Part of the magic of this online movie its beautiful, energetic soundtrack. We’re pleased to introduce a new version of this soundtrack by MSO’s Matt King, with lyrics by Abby Hasstedt. We encourage you to download the MP3 at:

http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/299/kings1ze.html

Send it to your friends with a link to MotionSciences.org!