US plans to 'fight the net' revealed

Adam Brookes / BBC | January 27 2006

A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military's plans for "information operations" - from psychological operations, to attacks on hostile computer networks.

Bloggers beware.

As the world turns networked, the Pentagon is calculating the military opportunities that computer networks, wireless technologies and the modern media offer.

From influencing public opinion through new media to designing "computer network attack" weapons, the US military is learning to fight an electronic war.

The declassified document is called "Information Operations Roadmap". It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University using the Freedom of Information Act.

Officials in the Pentagon wrote it in 2003. The Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed it.

The "roadmap" calls for a far-reaching overhaul of the military's ability to conduct information operations and electronic warfare. And, in some detail, it makes recommendations for how the US armed forces should think about this new, virtual warfare.

The document says that information is "critical to military success". Computer and telecommunications networks are of vital operational importance.

Propaganda

The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks.

All these are engaged in information operations.

Perhaps the most startling aspect of the roadmap is its acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military's psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.

"Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads.

"Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," it goes on.

The document's authors acknowledge that American news media should not unwittingly broadcast military propaganda. "Specific boundaries should be established," they write. But they don't seem to explain how.

"In this day and age it is impossible to prevent stories that are fed abroad as part of psychological operations propaganda from blowing back into the United States - even though they were directed abroad," says Kristin Adair of the National Security Archive.

Credibility problem

Public awareness of the US military's information operations is low, but it's growing - thanks to some operational clumsiness.
Late last year, it emerged that the Pentagon had paid a private company, the Lincoln Group, to plant hundreds of stories in Iraqi newspapers. The stories - all supportive of US policy - were written by military personnel and then placed in Iraqi publications.

And websites that appeared to be information sites on the politics of Africa and the Balkans were found to be run by the Pentagon.

But the true extent of the Pentagon's information operations, how they work, who they're aimed at, and at what point they turn from informing the public to influencing populations, is far from clear.

The roadmap, however, gives a flavour of what the US military is up to - and the grand scale on which it's thinking.

It reveals that Psyops personnel "support" the American government's international broadcasting. It singles out TV Marti - a station which broadcasts to Cuba - as receiving such support.

It recommends that a global website be established that supports America's strategic objectives. But no American diplomats here, thank you. The website would use content from "third parties with greater credibility to foreign audiences than US officials".

It also recommends that Psyops personnel should consider a range of technologies to disseminate propaganda in enemy territory: unmanned aerial vehicles, "miniaturized, scatterable public address systems", wireless devices, cellular phones and the internet.

'Fight the net'

When it describes plans for electronic warfare, or EW, the document takes on an extraordinary tone.

It seems to see the internet as being equivalent to an enemy weapons system.

"Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will 'fight the net' as it would an enemy weapons system," it reads.

The slogan "fight the net" appears several times throughout the roadmap.

The authors warn that US networks are very vulnerable to attack by hackers, enemies seeking to disable them, or spies looking for intelligence.

"Networks are growing faster than we can defend them... Attack sophistication is increasing... Number of events is increasing."

US digital ambition

And, in a grand finale, the document recommends that the United States should seek the ability to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum".

US forces should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum".

Consider that for a moment.

The US military seeks the capability to knock out every telephone, every networked computer, every radar system on the planet.

Are these plans the pipe dreams of self-aggrandising bureaucrats? Or are they real?

The fact that the "Information Operations Roadmap" is approved by the Secretary of Defense suggests that these plans are taken very seriously indeed in the Pentagon.

And that the scale and grandeur of the digital revolution is matched only by the US military's ambitions for it.

The US Military is Arresting Women In Iraq Because Their Husbands "May" Be Insurgents?

The latest news this week that US military authorities in Iraq are arresting Iraqi women and imprisoning them shouldn't surprise anyone. The idea is that the women's husbands "might" be insurgents. What the news forgot to tell you is that not only are they imprisoning Iraqi women, but they are torturing them and their children also. But most Americans will never know this.

This is coming from a government who supposedly says it wants to bring "freedom" and "democracy" to Iraq. How do you bring democracy to a country by imprisoning their citizens when they're not guilty? What is democratic about that?

The answer is that the US has no plans of bringing freedom to Iraq. The news revealed this week is only the tip of the iceberg. Torture in Iraq is rampant, as the Abu Ghraib scandal shows us. This is something that should make every American outraged and we should be demanding from our government why this practice continues.

But most Americans either not listening or simply don't care. American Idol is coming on tv tonight, and they don't have time to worry about the suffering that their own military is inflicting on people in another country. Even worse, many people believe it is a great thing to do.

Those who believe these things are too stupid to realize that a government who does this to the citizens of another country will do that here in American to all citizens. People have forgot about history. People have forgot about how the government placed Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War 2 and how the supreme court once ruled that Blacks weren't human.

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly people forget history. But one thing I've learned is history almost always repeat itself, and the same people who allowed Americans to be hurt then are still in power today. Most people aren't going to figure it out until its too late.

The criminal conspiracy that destroys America

Doug Thompson / Capital Hill Blue | January 25 2006

Sadly, the President of the United States is a criminal. In fact, he should be arrested, tried and sentenced to life in prison as a repeat offender.

He is a war criminal who led this nation into an illegal conflict based on lies. His criminal conduct in the invasion of Iraq has led to the deaths of more than 2,000 American military men and women and countless thousands of Iraqi civilians.

He ripped the Constitution to shreds, ordering the National Security Agency, the Pentagon and other government agencies to spy on American citizens.

His administration trampled basic American freedoms, creating a police state through the Gestapo tactics of the Department of Homeland Security and the rights-robbing USA Patriot Act.

He lied to the American people about his close relationship with corrupt GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, claiming he didn’t know the man who raised more than $100,000 for his campaign and visited the White House more than 200 times in his first year in office as well as trips to the ranch in Crawford, Texas.

He ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to withhold information about dangerous toxins dumped into the air over Manhattan when terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center.

His vice president met secretly with the CEOs of America’s top energy companies, cutting deals that gave those companies record profits while ripping off consumers at the gas pump.

Bush’s crimes against the Constitution and the American people began the day he took office and continue today. Each day brings new revelations of abuse of power, evasion of the law and disregard for basic rights of privacy.

Under Bush’s watch, the fears of George Orwell became all too real. The NSA routinely monitors phone calls of American citizens. The Defense Advance Research Projects Agency tracks routine travel and financial activities of Americans. The Pentagon sends infiltrators to spy on groups whose only crime is disagreement with the Iraq war or the other Draconian actions of the Bush administration.

America is now a totalitarian state ruled by a fascist dictator who hides behind phony claims that he is a “wartime president” who must usurp the Constitution to protect us from ourselves. Ironically, the “wartime president” is, in reality, a coward who hid out in the Texas Air National Guard to avoid his own service in wartime, a cardboard cowboy who sends others to die while he hides behind a legion of Secret Service agents who no doubt gag at the thought of taking a bullet for such a pathetic excuse for a leader.

But who protects us from the real enemy of freedom? That enemy resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, backed by a party that puts partisanship above patriotism, power above freedom and political expediency above justice.

I’ve come to the sad conclusion that the President of the United States is a madman, a raving lunatic driven by an insane lust for power, given to frequent outbursts of temper and out-of-control tantrums.

Bush has plunged this nation into a deepening Constitutional crisis, one that demands immediate action if we are to save what was once a great nation.

The last President to precipitate such a crisis, Richard M. Nixon, failed to destroy this nation because Congress, led by an opposition party, stepped up and took the actions necessary. But today’s Congress is ruled by criminally-complicit thugs who share Bush’s fanatical views.

Together, Bush and his Republican cronies in Congress have led America to ruin. Unfortunately, too many in this country have sat on their asses and let it happen.

Are Governments Searching For Subversives Through School Exams?

Paul Joseph Watson | January 23 2006

According to the Resistance Blog, A-level students (16-18) in Britain are being asked questions about alternative 9/11 beliefs, conspiracy theories and how much faith they have in government.

Is this part of a vetting process to try and identify the next generation of political dissidents or is it simply an assessment of how deep the alternative truth movement has penetrated the mass collective unconscious?

The exam took place in West Yorkshire England and in the first question, the student was asked to discuss the possibility of governments leading populations into believing facts that are not necessarily true. The source given was an individual who presented an alternative explanation behind 9/11.

Other questions centered around how much the student trusted Tony Blair and George W. Bush.

After the exam ended, the student was taken aside by the head of the exam board and asked if he she had spoken about the content with any other students (who as it turned out had taken a different exam with different questions). Upon denial, the student was told that if she kept it quiet then the exam board would look favorably upon her and give her a good grade.

Late last month we highlighted a case in Washington State where 10th grade students were given 'patriotism tests' that evaluated their faith in the state.

Why are education boards choosing this material? Are they taking orders from a fearful establishment who are keen to measure how far alternative perspectives on modern day events and how they affect the balance between the citizen and the state have perforated societal norms?

In any case, the very fact that such material finds its way into school exams is a good indication of how much reach and influence the alternative media now enjoys in popular culture.

Russian General: Nine Eleven a Globalist Inside Job

Kurt Nimmo | January 23 2006

It’s ironic General Leonid Ivashov, former Chief of Staff of the Russian armed forces, delivers the truth on globalism and this truth, unavailable in the corporate media of the “free world,” is published in a newspaper in Las Tunas, Cuba. Ivashov tells us so-called international terrorism “is not something independent of world politics but simply an instrument, a means to install a unipolar world with a sole world headquarters, a pretext to erase national borders and to establish the rule of a new world elite” and “is a phenomenon that combines the use of terror by state and non-state political structures as a means to attain their political objectives through people’s intimidation, psychological and social destabilization, the elimination of resistance from power organizations and the creation of appropriate conditions for the manipulation of the countries’ policies and the behavior of people.”

Ivashov hits the nail square on the head. “The organizers of [the nine eleven] attacks were the political and business circles interested in destabilizing the world order” because they “were not satisfied with the rhythm of the globalization process or its direction.” As others have explained—most notably Andreas von Bulow, Bundestag member of a parliamentary commission which oversaw the three branches of the German secret service—only “secret services and their current chiefs” (or retired staff with “influence inside the state organizations”) have the “ability to plan, organize and conduct an operation of such magnitude. Generally, secret services create, finance and control extremist organizations. Without the support of secret services, these organizations cannot exist—let alone carry out operations of such magnitude inside countries so well protected.” Thus the obvious patsy “Osama bin Laden and ‘Al Qaeda’ cannot be the organizers or the performers of the September 11 attacks” because they “do not have the necessary organization, resources or leaders” (or the military and intelligence experience and knowledge required). Instead, “a team of professionals had to be created and the Arab kamikazes are just extras to mask the operation.”

According to General Ivashov, the covert operation nine eleven was effective because it turned “the people’s demands to a struggle of undefined goals against an invisible enemy … destroying basic international norms and changing concepts such as: aggression, state terror, dictatorship or movement of national liberation” and also depriving “peoples of their legitimate right to fight against aggressions and to reject the work of foreign intelligence services.”

Here in America and likely much of Europe, General Ivashov’s message is all but invisible, since the corporate media assiduously ignores any discussion of nine eleven that does not take the fantastical Straussian neocon version of events as gospel truth. As an example of this, run a Google News search on General Ivashov—it will return the sole link to the Cuban newspaper above, peroid.

In order to combat the globalist agenda to reduce the planet to a “free trade” gulag, General Ivashov suggests the creation of “a geo-strategic organization (perhaps inspired in the Cooperation Organization of Shanghai comprised of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) with a set of values different to that of the Atlantists,” that is to say the neolib-neocon faction (in Russia, many political analysts call defenders of “unipolar globalism” Atlantists, or as A. Dugin of the International Eurasian Movement describes it, “strategists of the Western civilization and their conscious supporters in other parts of the planet, aiming at putting the whole world under control and imposing the social, economic and cultural stereotypes typical of the Western civilization to all the rest of mankind…. The atlantists are the builders of the ‘new world order’—the unprecedented world system benefiting an absolute minority of the planet’s population”).

If General Ivashov’s vision of a “geo-strategic organization” comes to pass, it will mean “total war” under the absolutist and demented neocon rubric, since the Straussian neocons, as elucidated in their principle PNAC document, will not tolerate “competitors” and will respond in drastic fashion, more than likely with nuclear weapons (as they appear likely to do under far less provocation in Iran).

The only way to stop this impending nuclear conflagration is to dethrone the Straussian neocons—and soon.

In the meantime, I am wishing for a pony.

Mayor Ray Nagin: A Great Puppet For The Globalists

Right after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin got on tv and told the US government they should be ashamed of themselves for letting the city go without aid for so long. Well, after the comments made this week by Ray Nagin, he should be ashamed of himself.

The comments Ray Nagin gave this week have given him a reputation, at least in my book, of being the most worthless mayor in America. His comments have angered both Blacks and Whites, and with good reason. What I want to do for my last blog entry of the week is post Ray Nagin's comments here, and our responses here at The Conspiracy Zone.

Ray Nagin - "Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it's destroyed and put stress on this country....Surely he doesn't approve of us being in Iraq under false pretenses. But surely he is upset at black America also. We're not taking care of ourselves."

Conspiracy Zone - Ray, there is no way to scientifically prove that God sent us hurricanes because he is mad at us. Hurricanes happen every year, and every so often, it has been SCIENTIFICALLY proven that the planet enters a stage where we have more powerful hurricanes than usual. President Bush believes that God wanted the US to invade Iraq, but you're saying he is mad at us because we did so? So which is it? And why exactly is God mad at African Americans? Aren't there not whites and people of other races who are "not taking care of themselves?" Why is God so selective?

Ray Nagin - "I can see in your eyes, you want to know, 'How do I take advantage of this incredible opportunity? How do I make sure New Orleans is not overrun with Mexican workers?'"

Conspiracy Zone - Ray, this comment just shows that you are a racist. You talk about Martin Luther King, yet King said that "all men are created equal." This includes hispanics and whites. Your comment just shows you are a hypocrite, and will increase animosity between blacks and hispanics, which the globalists and government want.

Ray Nagin - "This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be."

Conspiracy Zone - You are saying that you know the mind of God? If you are, you must be saying God is a racist, because saying that a city is supposed to have only one race of people is a racist comment. It also hurts the comparisons your comments made with Martin Luther King.

Based on Nagin's comments, and his handling of hurricane Katrina, we here at the Conspiracy Zone have come to the conclusion that he is a puppet of the globalists. He helps keep races of people divided by his comments, and just shows that his a a mere "puppet" mayor who is put in his position by the government to appease the blacks in New Orleans. He has no real power.

Whether he is acting in this way intentionally, we do not know. But what we do know is that he is making the globalists very happy with both his comments and policies.

Iran Attack: No Way Back Now

Kurt Nimmo | January 19 2006

As now appears obvious, the Straussian neocons will attack Iran, sooner before later. Secretary of State Condi Rice indicated as much when she said, “there’s not much to talk about” until Iran promises to stop working on a nuclear weapon, never mind that—as Mike Whitney, citing nuclear weapons expert Gordon Prather, points out—Iran is not working on a nuclear weapon. History is a harsh taskmistress and history teaches that when nations stop talking, war is the result. As the Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz once declared, “war is a continuation of politics by other means,” and the neocons are using a blood-soaked political ace to trump the United Nations and the Security Council into providing a familiar nod in the direction of war. As Whitney notes, the neocons believe they “can garner the necessary votes to bring Iran before the Security Council and, perhaps, win support for punitive action,” in other words support for total war, or rather total shock and awe, including the use of “global strike” nukes, as Cheney has promised.

Once again, the spineless United Nations is being set-up to rubber stamp the Straussian neocon plan for the total destruction of Islamic society and culture, as per the long-held neocon plan. It was nearly three years ago the cardboard cut-out non-president, George W. Bush, announced that “diplomacy has failed” and would rally the so-called “coalition of the willing” (or rather coalition of the bribed) to illegally and immorally invade Iraq and thus divest Saddam of his illusory “weapons of mass destruction.” As we know but far too many of us are wont to forget, prior to this “decision” (or implementation of the long-held Straussian neocon plan), there was a flurry of useless and (in retrospect) absurd diplomacy and debate amongst the members of the UN Security Council about the legality of invading an essentially defenseless and sanctions-wracked country.

As for the latter, France and Russia had asked long before the neocons grabbed the White House and the Pentagon that the murderous sanctions (more than a million people suffered and died, 500,000 of them children) but first Bill Clinton and then George Bush the Lesser, with the help of his faithful sidekick, Tony Blair, insisted on an unending cycle of mass murder, otherwise known as genocide. For its squeamishness and lack of fortitude in the task carved out by the neocons—kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and reduce the once proud nation to a violent cauldron—France was vilified and demonized in Congress (remember “Freedom Fries”) and the corporate media disparagingly referred to it as “Old Europe” (while “New Europe” semi-nations, such as Hungary, Georgia, Estonia, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Poland, and other post-communist wrecks, signed on in the hope they would be remunerated for their slavish behavior). It’s basically the same dog-eared script the Straussian neocons are following this time around.

It is sincerely pathetic (although more or less predictable) to see stuffed shirts—Philippe Douste-Blazy (France), Jack Straw (Britain), Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Germany), and Javier Solana (European High Representative of the Common Foreign and Security Policy)—”holding talks” in Berlin, basically pow-wowing in arrogant blue-blood fashion on how best to “refer” the sovereign nation of Iran to the bankrupt Security Council, greasing the skids for the neocons, who plan to kill as many Iranians as possible and, if the Straussian necromancer Cheney has his way, nuke the place and, as mindless Bush supporters, waving their plastic flags made by slaves in China, like to caterwaul, turn the place into a radioactive parking lot.

Meanwhile, as the old war criminal Ariel Sharon lies in a coma, acting Israeli PM Ehud Olmert decided to egg on the coming death dance. “Under no circumstances, and at no point, can Israel allow anyone with these kinds of malicious designs against us, to have control of weapons of destruction that can threaten our existence,” Olmert told a joint news conference with Israeli president Moshe Katsav. “The state of Israel cannot reconcile itself to a situation in which there is a threat against us, just as, in my view, the nations of Europe and the United States cannot reconcile themselves.”

Some of us cannot reconcile ourselves with the fact Israel has around 400 nuclear bombs (according to estimates based on information provided by Mordechai Vanunu, who was locked up for nearly 20 years for revealing the truth about Israel’s nukes to the world). Israel has unscrupulously used these nukes to blackmail the United States (for instance, they forced Kissinger and Nixon to airlift supplies during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, according to Seymour M. Hersh in his book, The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy). “Too many senior Israeli officials have taken to issuing threatening statements vis-a-vis Iraq and Iran,” declared defense analyst Zeev Schiff. “Off-the-cuff Israeli nuclear threats have become a problem, even before the onset of the Iraqi crisis…. Washington may decide it wants to distance itself from Israel in order to avoid being accused of having conspired with us on an action we planned exclusively by ourselves” (see previous link). Of course, Washington did no such thing—and no politician there would think of it, considering the almighty clout of AIPAC and “lobbyists” with all the thuggish finesse of Jack Abramoff.

But none of this is relevant now. Israel will goad the United States—with the dumbfounded blessing of the Europeans (or their blue-blood rulers) and the ineffectual suck-up Security Council—into blasting the daylights out of Iran, probably killing thousands, if not eventually hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

It appears all of this will go down in March, when “diplomacy” finally fails in the United Nations and, significantly, when America reaches its $8,184 trillion debt ceiling, thus forcing the nation (to the greedy glee of the criminal neolib financier class) into a spurt of military Keynesianism in order to jump-start the economy. Few seem to notice this is what happened in Germany in the 1930s and the result was fascism and mass misery and incomprehensible numbers of dead people. “Wars provide an economic boost but typically produce little of lasting value,” notes Gracchus Jones. “But in America today, there is no economic engine, and if there is one thing modern economic history proves, it is that you cannot have prosperity without one.”

And that’s why we are inexorably headed for a dictatorship in this country. Iran will be the catalyst. The Straussian neocon Iran attack will undoubtedly ignite the Middle East and the coming depression will fill the ranks of a newly minted slave-conscription military with young unemployed bodies. Total war and economic misery mixed with a police state now rearing its ugly head is manna from heaven for the Straussian neocons. “No stages,” John Pilger reports Richard Perle declaring. “This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq… this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don’t try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war… our children will sing great songs about us years from now.”

Of course, it will be difficult to sing when you’re dying from cancer, thanks to a planet polluted with depleted uranium.

Once Upon A Time In America

Chuck Baldwin | January 18 2006

The America that our children are growing up in today in no way resembles the America our Founding Fathers bequeathed to their posterity. The America of our ancestors had no IRS, no ACLU, no NEA, and no BATFE. In our fathers' America, children could pray aloud and read the Bible in school. Divorce rates were practically unknown as was child abuse.

In America of yesteryear, it didn't cost billions of dollars to educate our children, and when they graduated from grammar school, they had a better education than most high school graduates (and even some college graduates) today. Then again, that was during a time when teachers enjoyed parents' support in maintaining discipline in the classroom. Imagine that.

In our once great America, virginity and chastity were popular virtues, and one could live to old age and never be exposed to the abominations of homosexuality and adultery.

There was a time in this great country when, except for a few certain morally corrupt large cities, the most egregious gamblers hung out in bingo parlors, and anyone who even whispered his or her support for state-sponsored gambling would be run out of town on a rail.

Once upon a time in this great land, it only took a father's paycheck to comfortably support his family. This was primarily due to the fact that local, state, and federal taxes were not stealing nearly half of his income. Beyond that, when he bought a piece of property, no one could take it away-not even the government. After all, he was not then required to pay squatter's rent (property taxes) in order to keep something he had already paid for.

There was also a time in the once noble America when physicians actually made personal visits to the homes of their patients. You see, doctors then truly went into their profession for the purpose of helping people and not to get rich.

Furthermore, at one time in our once wonderful country, Sunday was universally regarded as "The Lord's Day," and one would look long and hard to find even a dime store (remember those?) open.

I even remember when Americans were free to order firearms from the Sears and Roebuck or J.C. Penny catalog. Then again, I well recall that as a boy I could leave home on my bicycle (with instructions to be back at a certain time) and never entertain the first thought that I was in any danger.

I also remember going to the Saturday matinee unsupervised (it was unnecessary) and never hearing God's name taken in vain or any other profane speech, for that matter. There was no rating system then, of course, because virtually every movie was suitable for the entire family.

Furthermore, some of us can even remember when farmers were free to plant whatever crops they chose and in whatever quantities they chose. And they did not have to "give the farm away" in order to purchase the needed equipment, either.

However, the America our children are growing up in today is much different. Today's children are daily exposed to all manner of moral deviancy, risk becoming a victim of sexual predators, and attend schools that more resemble detention centers than institutions of education.

Today's children are growing up in a world where their federal government has become a ubiquitous snoop, where freedoms are only granted piece-meal, and where most of their life's activity is controlled and regulated by the great Nanny State. Americans need to face it: freedom, as envisioned by America's Founding Fathers, is dead! Today's America is some kind of hybrid collection of fascism, socialism, and international capitalism, and where the difference between Democrats and Republicans isn't worth a plug nickel! Neither do the terms "liberal" nor "conservative" hold any meaning today. On the whole, neither group has the slightest understanding of America's founding principles.

No, today's America holds no resemblance to the once great nation for which our forebears fought and died. And given the rapidity with which America has forsaken its heritage, can you imagine what it will look like 50 years from now?

People forgetting basic U.S. freedoms

Brian Beck | January 17 2006

If you support a king-like presidency, if you don't believe that due process is important for everybody, if you don't recognize a right to privacy, if you think freedom of religion means freedom to use public money to support the most popular religion, if you don't think it matters that our leaders lied to us about reasons for going to war, if it doesn't bother you that we torture prisoners, what exactly is it that you think makes this country great?

We have been a beacon of hope for more than two centuries because there was always the idea that these things are not acceptable in our government.

There have been stumbling blocks of course, but there were guiding ideals and the potential for what we could be generally outweighed the sins that were committed.

I get the sense now that those guiding principles are being thrown away. As the tyranny that sparked our existence gets forgotten in history books, we have collectively forgotten why so many of our rights were so important to the founding fathers.

It's not necessarily that they were smarter than any of us, but they saw first hand why those rights were so valuable.

Now, out of fear and ignorance, many in this country have decided that those rights really aren't that important. I hope it doesn't take another round of complete tyranny for people to again realize the importance of the liberties that we have been given.

Face it, the polls again proved they don't need you; they control the voting machines

Bev Conover | January 16 2006

To the Republicans' glee, following 18 hours of worthless show hearings, the Democrats say they can't stop Samuel Alito's confirmation for a seat on the US Supreme Court. Hogwash!

The truth is that they don't want to make the effort to block the slippery, ultra-rightist Alito, even if it costs the people -- "rabble" as John Adams called them -- what little is left of their freedoms. After all, George W. Bush said that "the constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper."

It's not that the Dems fear the reaction of the people if they attempt to filibuster Alito's confirmation or manage, with the help of any sane Republicans, to deny Alito a seat on the highest court. Why should they? After all, there is that elephant in the room that too many people refuse to acknowledge: computerized voting equipment -- touch screens, optically scanned ballots, even punched cards that are tabulated by easily rigged computers. The two things the Democrats fear is angering their fascist power brokers who pony up the campaign money that fattens the pockets of the corporate media and whatever dirt Bush has on them, thanks to the illegal snooping of the FBI, the CIA and the NSA.

The other wing of the party, the Republican, falsely claims the occupant of the White House, as long as he/she is a Republicrat -- whether installed there legitimately or illegitimately, as in the case of George W. Bush -- is entitled to his/her appointments. Where is that written in the Constitution of the United States?

Nowhere. Article II of the constitution says, "He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Counsuls, Judges of the supreme Court, all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Department." [Emphasis added]

True, the framers sandbagged us by not requiring a two-thirds vote of the Senate on Supreme Court justices, ambassadors, cabinet officers and all the rest. Even at that, the constitution doesn't say a president is entitled to have his/her choices rubber-stamped.

And Republicrats being Republicrats, whether they are ultra-rightists, conservatives or moderates, never consider how their actions can come home to bite them. An example of their shortsightedness is the 22nd Amendment, limiting a president to two terms. Passed by the Republican-controlled Senate of the 80th Congress in 1947, in a fit of anger over Franklin D. Roosevelt's election to four terms, and ratified on March 1, 1951, it was the Republicrats who felt the sting of their handiwork because President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, could not seek a third term, had the ailing Ike wanted to try for three. The Republicrats got stung again by their presidential term limit amendment that prohibited their sainted Ronald Reagan, despite being in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, from seeking a third term.

It's been all downhill for the few that have managed to hang onto the White House for second terms since the ratification of the 22nd Amendment. Call it the Lame Duck Syndrome. Richard Nixon, facing impeachment, resigned in disgrace. Reagan engaged in the illegal Iran-contra affair and, up until George W. Bush, racked up more debt that all his predecessors combined. Clinton was impeached, not for his real crimes (illegally bombing Kosovo, Serbian civilians, Baghdad, Afghanistan, and Sudan; aiding and abetting Suharto, continuing sanctions against Iraq; banning the sale of food, medicine and water treatment chemicals to Cuba) but for lying about his sexual affairs. And now we have George W., a vicious cheat, liar and war criminal, who is a tiny step away from declaring himself a dictator, so don't be surprised if he announces that an "election" in 2008 will imperil "national security," therefore, for the "protection" of the American people, he ain't leaving.

After all, what incentive do lame ducks have to do the right thing? None. The only incentive they have is to please their corporate masters in order to land cushy positions -- little work, big pay -- when they leave office. But that didn't occur to the Republicrats back in '47, because they were blinded by their hatred for the dead Roosevelt and the Democans, even though it was a Democan, Harry Truman, who ordered two atomic bombs dropped on Japan and saddled us with the CIA and NSA. That shows the Democratic Party was already three-quarters gone. After that the only possibly real Democrat to gain the presidency was John F. Kennedy, but he had to be eliminated before making a reelection bid, so we'll never know for sure how much of a real Democrat he was.

And now the Republicrats, blinded by hubris, are wallowing in their power, never giving a thought to the possibility that Samuel Alito, once on the Supreme Court, may do a 180 on them. Ike got the surprise when Earl Warren, his choice for chief justice, whom he believed to be a moderate conservative proved to be an unabashed liberal -- that's back in the days when there were some real liberals, not today's cowering Democans the Republicrats bogusly claim are liberals.

As for Alito, is it too far-fetched to think this guy may be something other than he appears to be? Consider how he has made a career of sucking up to Republicrats who could advance his climb up the ladder. Is he merely a yes man or has he just been working toward the big prize: a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court? Do we really want to find out? Because if he allies himself with Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, it will take only one more radical "strict constructionist" on the court to cook us and give Bush anything and everything he wants.

If the Democans can't put up a fight to keep Alito or any other radical conservative off the court, what makes anyone think they will have the guts to draw bills of impeachment against Bush and his whole administration -- even if the powers behind the curtain rig the vote to let them regain both houses next November?

If either wing of our one major party had a shred of decency and any regard for the constitution they swore to uphold and defend, Alito and any other nominee needing Senate confirmation should have been bounced out the first time they refused to answer a question, waffled or wavered. The American people have a right to know what they are getting. And any Democan or Republicrat who quivers in fear of being accused of "Borking" a nominee disgraces the country and us.

The same band of fascists who have taken over the Republican Party also control the Democratic Party through the monstrous Democratic Leadership Council. A fact that many have yet to face up to. But come November, millions will dutifully cast votes on rigged equipment and the powers that be will pretend to count them, knowing full well the outcome beforehand.

Beam weapons almost ready for battle

Directed energy could revolutionize warfare, expert says

MCNBC/Leonard David | January 12 2006

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. - There is a new breed of weaponry fast approaching — and at the speed of light, no less. They are labeled "directed-energy weapons," and they may well signal a revolution in military hardware — perhaps more so than the atomic bomb.

Directed-energy weapons take the form of lasers, high-powered microwaves and particle beams. Their adoption for ground, air, sea, and space warfare depends not only on using the electromagnetic spectrum, but also upon favorable political and budgetary wavelengths too.

That’s the outlook of J. Douglas Beason, author of the recently published book "The E-Bomb: How America’s New Directed Energy Weapons Will Change the Way Wars Will Be Fought in the Future." Beason previously served on the White House staff working for the president’s science adviser under both the Bush and Clinton administrations.

After more than two decades of research, the United States is on the verge of deploying a new generation of weapons that discharge beams of energy, such as the Airborne Laser and the Active Denial System, as well as the Tactical High Energy Laser, or THEL.

"History has shown that, without investment in high technology, fighting the next war will be done using the 'last war' type of technique," Beason told Space.com. Putting money into basic and long-range research is critical, Beason said, adding: "You can’t always schedule breakthroughs."

A leading expert in directed-energy research for 26 years, Beason is also director of threat reduction here at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. However, he noted that he was expressing his own views rather than the policy of the laboratory, the Defense Department or the Energy Department.

Ripe for transformation?
Though considerable work has been done in lasers, high-power microwaves and other directed-energy technologies, weaponization is still an ongoing process.

For example, work is continuing in the military’s Airborne Laser program. It utilizes a megawatt-class, high-energy chemical oxygen iodine laser toted skyward aboard a modified Boeing 747-400 aircraft. Purpose of the program is to enable the detection, tracking and destruction of ballistic missiles in the boost phase, or powered part of their flight.

Similarly, testing of the U.S. Army’s Tactical High Energy Laser in White Sands, N.M., has shown the ability of heating high-flying rocket warheads, blasting them with enough energy to make them self-detonate. THEL uses a high-energy, deuterium fluoride chemical laser. A mobile THEL also demonstrated the ability to kill multiple mortar rounds.

Then there’s Active Denial Technology — a non-lethal way to use millimeter-wave electromagnetic energy to stop, deter and turn back an advancing adversary. This technology, supported by the U.S. Marines, uses a beam of millimeter waves to heat a foe’s skin, causing severe pain without damage, and making the adversary flee the scene.

Beason also pointed to new exciting research areas underway at the Los Alamos National Laboratory: Free-electron laser work with the Navy and a new type of directed energy that operates in the terahertz region.

Niche for new technology
While progress in directed-energy is appreciable, Beason sees two upfront problems in moving the technology forward. One issue has to do with "convincing the warfighter that there’s a niche for this new type of weapon," and the other relates to making sure these new systems are not viewed as a panacea to solve all problems. "They are only another tool," he said.

Looming even larger is the role of those who acquire new weapons. "The U.S. could put ourselves in a very disastrous position if we allow our acquisition officials to be non-technically competent," Beason explained.

Over the decades, Beason said that the field of directed-energy has had its share of "snake-oil salesmen", as well as those advocates who overpromised. "It wasn’t ready for prime time."

At present, directed-energy systems "are barely limping along with enough money just to prove that they can work," Beason pointed out. Meanwhile, huge slugs of money are being put into legacy-type systems to keep them going.

"It’s a matter of priority," Beason said. The time is now to identify high-payoff, directed-energy projects for the smallest amounts of money, he said.

As Usual, Conservative Christians Don't Get It

Chuck Baldwin | January 11 2006

With confirmation hearings underway for Judge Samuel Alito, many conservative Christians are focusing on the abortion issue. In fact, many pro-life activists are hailing Alito as the man who would overturn legalized abortion in America.

However, as is usually the case, most conservative Christians cannot see beyond the abortion debate to look at the bigger picture. Then again, myopia seems to be a permanent disorder affecting a majority of conservative Christians today, so why should things suddenly change now?

For the record, Judge Alito probably finds abortion personally repugnant. It is certainly safe to say that Alito's opinions on abortion seem to reflect greater respect for life than anything we saw from Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. However, that reality alone will not make much difference. There is a greater reality at work here that most conservative Christians deliberately choose to ignore: the Republican Party has no intentions of ending legalized abortion! Absolutely none!

To the vast majority of Republicans in Washington, D.C., the abortion issue is merely a ready-made sugar-stick to hand out to conservative Christians every election cycle in order to keep them corralled in the GOP vote column.

As long as a Republican candidate can claim to be "pro-life," he or she can count on receiving sizeable support from conservative Christians. That simple statement, whether genuine or not, whether followed with any substantive action or not, guarantees that most Christian televangelists will spend countless hours pleading with their supporters to vote "pro-life" by supporting the GOP ticket.

It doesn't matter that so-called "pro-life" Republican candidates have had over 30 years to overturn Roe and are no closer now to doing so than they were when Roe was first decided. It doesn't matter that not a single "pro-life" Republican congressman has introduced legislation under Article III, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution to remove Roe from the jurisdiction of the Court, which is the prerogative of Congress to do. It doesn't matter that after spending multiplied millions of dollars and electing hundreds of "pro-life" Republicans, nothing has been done to overturn Roe. It doesn't matter that the Republican Party has controlled the White House for over 17 of the last 25 years and, accordingly, has controlled appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court for all of those years (not to mention the fact that it was a majority Republican- appointed Court that passed the Roe decision), and nothing has been done to overturn Roe. All that matters is that Republicans talk "pro-life" during the election cycle.

How can any sensible person believe that the Republican Party truly intends to overturn the Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion on demand? It's beyond laughable: it's hysterical!

Even if Judge Alito would vote to overturn Roe should the opportunity present itself, it is almost certain that Chief Justice John Roberts would not vote to overturn it. Therefore, the vote to overturn Roe is 6-3 against-at best! In other words, we are no closer to reversing Roe v Wade than we were before President Bush was elected!

However, none of this matters to most conservative Christians. After all, they can beat their chests, hobnob with Republican big- shots, raise millions of dollars from gullible Christians, and pretend to be "pro-life" every two years from now until the cows come home without worrying about anything of substance actually being done. What a racket! Yet, the situation is actually worse than that.

Worse than most Christians' gullibility regarding the abortion issue is the manner in which they give Republicans a pass on other issues of immense importance. It seems that all a Republican has to do to gain the confidence and support of the vast majority of conservative Christians is say he is "pro-life" and opposed to homosexual marriage. His or her position on virtually everything else doesn't seem to matter.

It doesn't seem to matter to most conservative Christians that President Bush has increased deficit spending beyond that of all previous administrations put together. Yes, you read it right: President Bush (with the aid of his fellow Republicans in Congress) is a bigger debtor than all 42 of his predecessors combined!

According to the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor, Dec. 2005, "According to the Treasury Department, from 1776-2000, the first 224 years of U.S. history, 42 U.S. presidents borrowed a combined $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions, but in the past four years alone, the Bush administration borrowed $1.05 trillion." But that doesn't matter to a hill of beans to most conservative Christians. Bush is "pro-life."

It doesn't matter to the vast majority of conservative Christians that President Bush is attempting to accrue power to the executive branch at the expense of constitutional government, that he is championing extremely questionable, if not downright dangerous, legislation that could result in the dismantlement of civil and individual liberties. It doesn't matter that Bush is involved in the most intense nation-building scheme in post World War II history. It doesn't matter that he has done more to open the door of illegal immigration than any president in modern memory. It doesn't matter that he spearheaded (and continues to laud) the most expensive and most intrusive expansion of the federal government's role in public education in U.S. history. It doesn't matter that Bush continues to promote ill-conceived trade deals such as CAFTA and FTAA which weaken American independence and sacrifice thousands of American jobs. Because President Bush claims to be "pro-life," conservative Christians give him a pass on virtually any and all other conduct.

Therefore, even if (a big if) Judge Alito would join Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas as being willing to overturn Roe, the votes are still not there to actually do so.

Furthermore, President Bush could get at least one, and maybe two, additional Supreme Court appointments. Two of the Court's current justices are aged and in ill health. In other words, by the time Bush leaves office, he could get as many as four appointments to the High Court.

However, instead of overturning Roe v Wade, it is much more likely that the Supreme Court will further advance the imperialistic philosophy of the Bush administration resulting in an ongoing and rapid demise of individual liberties for American citizens. In other words, legalized abortion will still be intact but constitutional liberties won't be, Bush's appointments to the High Court notwithstanding. And, unfortunately, when it happens, conservative Christians still won't get it.

Create an e-annoyance, go to jail

Declan McCullagh / CNet | January 10 2006

Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime.

It's no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.

In other words, it's OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess.

This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison.

"The use of the word 'annoy' is particularly problematic," says Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "What's annoying to one person may not be annoying to someone else."

Buried deep in the new law is Sec. 113, an innocuously titled bit called "Preventing Cyberstalking." It rewrites existing telephone harassment law to prohibit anyone from using the Internet "without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy."

To grease the rails for this idea, Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, and the section's other sponsors slipped it into an unrelated, must-pass bill to fund the Department of Justice. The plan: to make it politically infeasible for politicians to oppose the measure.

The tactic worked. The bill cleared the House of Representatives by voice vote, and the Senate unanimously approved it Dec. 16.

There's an interesting side note. An earlier version that the House approved in September had radically different wording. It was reasonable by comparison, and criminalized only using an "interactive computer service" to cause someone "substantial emotional harm."

That kind of prohibition might make sense. But why should merely annoying someone be illegal?

There are perfectly legitimate reasons to set up a Web site or write something incendiary without telling everyone exactly who you are.

Think about it: A woman fired by a manager who demanded sexual favors wants to blog about it without divulging her full name. An aspiring pundit hopes to set up the next Suck.com. A frustrated citizen wants to send e-mail describing corruption in local government without worrying about reprisals.

In each of those three cases, someone's probably going to be annoyed. That's enough to make the action a crime. (The Justice Department won't file charges in every case, of course, but trusting prosecutorial discretion is hardly reassuring.)

Clinton Fein, a San Francisco resident who runs the Annoy.com site, says a feature permitting visitors to send obnoxious and profane postcards through e-mail could be imperiled.

"Who decides what's annoying? That's the ultimate question," Fein said. He added: "If you send an annoying message via the United States Post Office, do you have to reveal your identity?"

Fein once sued to overturn part of the Communications Decency Act that outlawed transmitting indecent material "with intent to annoy." But the courts ruled the law applied only to obscene material, so Annoy.com didn't have to worry.

"I'm certainly not going to close the site down," Fein said on Friday. "I would fight it on First Amendment grounds."

He's right. Our esteemed politicians can't seem to grasp this simple point, but the First Amendment protects our right to write something that annoys someone else.

It even shields our right to do it anonymously. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas defended this principle magnificently in a 1995 case involving an Ohio woman who was punished for distributing anonymous political pamphlets.

If President Bush truly believed in the principle of limited government (it is in his official bio), he'd realize that the law he signed cannot be squared with the Constitution he swore to uphold.

And then he'd repeat what President Clinton did a decade ago when he felt compelled to sign a massive telecommunications law. Clinton realized that the section of the law punishing abortion-related material on the Internet was unconstitutional, and he directed the Justice Department not to enforce it.

Bush has the chance to show his respect for what he calls Americans' personal freedoms. Now we'll see if the president rises to the occasion.

Surviving the New World Order

Henry Makow, Ph.D | January 9 2006

[Memo to Myself]

This isn't about storing silver coins or canned food or getting an AK-47.

It's about saving your soul not your skin. It's about the tendency to obsess on the New World Order, get depressed and become unbearable.

The situation is depressing. A satanic cult controls the credit of the world and rules through myriad proxies. It is determined to destroy civilization and institute an Orwellian police state.

You spend hours every day addictively watching for new developments. Your face is pressed up against the store window of the world.

You are "externalized." You can't go into the kitchen without switching on the radio.

You try to squeeze your sustenance from the world. But much of what you imbibe is poisonous: depravity, corruption, duplicity and tragedy. (Is that the point of the mass media? To demoralize and brutalize?)

Mankind is in the grip of a diabolical force that constantly strives to legitimize itself through deception. You can't overcome this demon. But you still control your personal life. Ultimately, the battle is for the soul of humanity. Why not begin by defending your soul?

This means erecting a wall between the soul, and the world, and establishing a balance between the sacred and the profane. You need to shut out the world (the profane) for set periods of time and focus on what inspires you. That means turning off the TV, Internet and media in general.

Just as you nourish your body with food, you feed your soul with thoughts, sights and sounds. Your soul reaches out for beauty, grace, harmony, truth and goodness. You need to discover what lifts your spirit.

It might be a long walk, nature, music, sports, or music. It might be time with your family or friends. It might be the Bible, religious writing or meditation.

"Do what you love," Henry David Thoreau said. "Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw at it still."

You agree with the mystics who say happiness is within. It involves the possession of your soul, and not wanting anything else. By looking outside your self, you displace your soul and become the thing you want. This is the source of addictive behavior and unhappiness.

The occult elite controls us with sex and money- the North-South of the mind. The courtship stage is a period when sexual feelings are strong so two people will bond and start a family. Sex/romance was not meant to become a permanent preoccupation and panacea. The cult uses it to distract and degrade us while it creates a police state (using the "War on Terror" as a ruse.)

The same is true of money. The stock market is a giant casino addicting millions. The central banking cult has unlimited funds. To make us feel good, (while it trashes civil rights and wages senseless war) it makes the market go up. To fleece us, it crashes the market. Don't be a puppet.

The diabolical powers have been here for a long time. You have discovered their existence only because they signaled the beginning of their endgame on Sept. 11.

Don't let them stunt or degrade you by obsessing on their iniquity. Restore balance by attuning yourself to the things you love. Be an outpost of happiness.

Why Did the CIA Give Iran the Atom Bomb?

James Risen/London Guardian/ Jan 6, 2006

In an extract from his explosive new book, New York Times reporter James Risen reveals the bungles and miscalculations that led to a spectacular intelligence fiasco

She had probably done this a dozen times before. Modern digital technology had made clandestine communications with overseas agents seem routine. Back in the cold war, contacting a secret agent in Moscow or Beijing was a dangerous, labour-intensive process that could take days or even weeks. But by 2004, it was possible to send high-speed, encrypted messages directly and instantaneously from CIA headquarters to agents in the field who were equipped with small, covert personal communications devices. So the officer at CIA headquarters assigned to handle communications with the agency's spies in Iran probably didn't think twice when she began her latest download. With a few simple commands, she sent a secret data flow to one of the Iranian agents in the CIA's spy network. Just as she had done so many times before.

But this time, the ease and speed of the technology betrayed her. The CIA officer had made a disastrous mistake. She had sent information to one Iranian agent that exposed an entire spy network; the data could be used to identify virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran.
Mistake piled on mistake. As the CIA later learned, the Iranian who received the download was a double agent. The agent quickly turned the data over to Iranian security officials, and it enabled them to "roll up" the CIA's network throughout Iran. CIA sources say that several of the Iranian agents were arrested and jailed, while the fates of some of the others is still unknown.

This espionage disaster, of course, was not reported. It left the CIA virtually blind in Iran, unable to provide any significant intelligence on one of the most critical issues facing the US - whether Tehran was about to go nuclear.

In fact, just as President Bush and his aides were making the case in 2004 and 2005 that Iran was moving rapidly to develop nuclear weapons, the American intelligence community found itself unable to provide the evidence to back up the administration's public arguments. On the heels of the CIA's failure to provide accurate pre-war intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, the agency was once again clueless in the Middle East. In the spring of 2005, in the wake of the CIA's Iranian disaster, Porter Goss, its new director, told President Bush in a White House briefing that the CIA really didn't know how close Iran was to becoming a nuclear power.

But it's worse than that. Deep in the bowels of the CIA, someone must be nervously, but very privately, wondering: "Whatever happened to those nuclear blueprints we gave to the Iranians?"

The story dates back to the Clinton administration and February 2000, when one frightened Russian scientist walked Vienna's winter streets. The Russian had good reason to be afraid. He was walking around Vienna with blueprints for a nuclear bomb.

To be precise, he was carrying technical designs for a TBA 480 high-voltage block, otherwise known as a "firing set", for a Russian-designed nuclear weapon. He held in his hands the knowledge needed to create a perfect implosion that could trigger a nuclear chain reaction inside a small spherical core. It was one of the greatest engineering secrets in the world, providing the solution to one of a handful of problems that separated nuclear powers such as the United States and Russia from rogue countries such as Iran that were desperate to join the nuclear club but had so far fallen short.

The Russian, who had defected to the US years earlier, still couldn't believe the orders he had received from CIA headquarters. The CIA had given him the nuclear blueprints and then sent him to Vienna to sell them - or simply give them - to the Iranian representatives to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). With the Russian doing its bidding, the CIA appeared to be about to help Iran leapfrog one of the last remaining engineering hurdles blocking its path to a nuclear weapon. The dangerous irony was not lost on the Russian - the IAEA was an international organisation created to restrict the spread of nuclear technology.

The Russian was a nuclear engineer in the pay of the CIA, which had arranged for him to become an American citizen and funded him to the tune of $5,000 a month. It seemed like easy money, with few strings attached.

Until now. The CIA was placing him on the front line of a plan that seemed to be completely at odds with the interests of the US, and it had taken a lot of persuading by his CIA case officer to convince him to go through with what appeared to be a rogue operation.

The case officer worked hard to convince him - even though he had doubts about the plan as well. As he was sweet-talking the Russian into flying to Vienna, the case officer wondered whether he was involved in an illegal covert action. Should he expect to be hauled before a congressional committee and grilled because he was the officer who helped give nuclear blueprints to Iran? The code name for this operation was Merlin; to the officer, that seemed like a wry tip-off that nothing about this programme was what it appeared to be. He did his best to hide his concerns from his Russian agent.

The Russian's assignment from the CIA was to pose as an unemployed and greedy scientist who was willing to sell his soul - and the secrets of the atomic bomb - to the highest bidder. By hook or by crook, the CIA told him, he was to get the nuclear blueprints to the Iranians. They would quickly recognise their value and rush them back to their superiors in Tehran.

The plan had been laid out for the defector during a CIA-financed trip to San Francisco, where he had meetings with CIA officers and nuclear experts mixed in with leisurely wine-tasting trips to Sonoma County. In a luxurious San Francisco hotel room, a senior CIA official involved in the operation talked the Russian through the details of the plan. He brought in experts from one of the national laboratories to go over the blueprints that he was supposed to give the Iranians.

The senior CIA officer could see that the Russian was nervous, and so he tried to downplay the significance of what they were asking him to do. He said the CIA was mounting the operation simply to find out where the Iranians were with their nuclear programme. This was just an intelligence-gathering effort, the CIA officer said, not an illegal attempt to give Iran the bomb. He suggested that the Iranians already had the technology he was going to hand over to them. It was all a game. Nothing too serious.

On paper, Merlin was supposed to stunt the development of Tehran's nuclear programme by sending Iran's weapons experts down the wrong technical path. The CIA believed that once the Iranians had the blueprints and studied them, they would believe the designs were usable and so would start to build an atom bomb based on the flawed designs. But Tehran would get a big surprise when its scientists tried to explode their new bomb. Instead of a mushroom cloud, the Iranian scientists would witness a disappointing fizzle. The Iranian nuclear programme would suffer a humiliating setback, and Tehran's goal of becoming a nuclear power would have been delayed by several years. In the meantime, the CIA, by watching Iran's reaction to the blueprints, would have gained a wealth of information about the status of Iran's weapons programme, which has been shrouded in secrecy.

The Russian studied the blueprints the CIA had given him. Within minutes of being handed the designs, he had identified a flaw. "This isn't right," he told the CIA officers gathered around the hotel room. "There is something wrong." His comments prompted stony looks, but no straight answers from the CIA men. No one in the meeting seemed surprised by the Russian's assertion that the blueprints didn't look quite right, but no one wanted to enlighten him further on the matter, either.

In fact, the CIA case officer who was the Russian's personal handler had been stunned by his statement. During a break, he took the senior CIA officer aside. "He wasn't supposed to know that," the CIA case officer told his superior. "He wasn't supposed to find a flaw."

"Don't worry," the senior CIA officer calmly replied. "It doesn't matter."

The CIA case officer couldn't believe the senior CIA officer's answer, but he managed to keep his fears from the Russian, and continued to train him for his mission.

After their trip to San Francisco, the case officer handed the Russian a sealed envelope with the nuclear blueprints inside. He was told not to open the envelope under any circumstances. He was to follow the CIA's instructions to find the Iranians and give them the envelope with the documents inside. Keep it simple, and get out of Vienna safe and alive, the Russian was told. But the defector had his own ideas about how he might play that game.

The CIA had discovered that a high-ranking Iranian official would be travelling to Vienna and visiting the Iranian mission to the IAEA, and so the agency decided to send the Russian to Vienna at the same time. It was hoped that he could make contact with either the Iranian representative to the IAEA or the visitor from Tehran.

In Vienna, however, the Russian unsealed the envelope with the nuclear blueprints and included a personal letter of his own to the Iranians. No matter what the CIA told him, he was going to hedge his bets. There was obviously something wrong with the blueprints - so he decided to mention that fact to the Iranians in his letter. They would certainly find flaws for themselves, and if he didn't tell them first, they would never want to deal with him again.

The Russian was thus warning the Iranians as carefully as he could that there was a flaw somewhere in the nuclear blueprints, and he could help them find it. At the same time, he was still going through with the CIA's operation in the only way he thought would work.

The Russian soon found 19 Heinstrasse, a five-storey office and apartment building with a flat, pale green and beige facade in a quiet, slightly down-at-heel neighbourhood in Vienna's north end. Amid the list of Austrian tenants, there was one simple line: "PM/Iran." The Iranians clearly didn't want publicity. An Austrian postman helped him. As the Russian stood by, the postman opened the building door and dropped off the mail. The Russian followed suit; he realised that he could leave his package without actually having to talk to anyone. He slipped through the front door, and hurriedly shoved his envelope through the inner-door slot at the Iranian office.

The Russian fled the mission without being seen. He was deeply relieved that he had made the hand-off without having to come face to face with a real live Iranian. He flew back to the US without being detected by either Austrian security or, more importantly, Iranian intelligence.

Just days after the Russian dropped off his package at the Iranian mission, the National Security Agency reported that an Iranian official in Vienna abruptly changed his schedule, making airline reservations to fly home to Iran. The odds were that the nuclear blueprints were now in Tehran.

The Russian scientist's fears about the operation seemed well founded. He was the front man for what may have been one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA, one that may have helped put nuclear weapons in the hands of a charter member of what President George W Bush has called the "axis of evil".

Operation Merlin has been one of the most closely guarded secrets in the Clinton and Bush administrations. It's not clear who originally came up with the idea, but the plan was first approved by Clinton. After the Russian scientist's fateful trip to Vienna, however, the Merlin operation was endorsed by the Bush administration, possibly with an eye toward repeating it against North Korea or other dangerous states.

Several former CIA officials say that the theory behind Merlin - handing over tainted weapon designs to confound one of America's adversaries - is a trick that has been used many times in past operations, stretching back to the cold war. But in previous cases, such Trojan horse operations involved conventional weapons; none of the former officials had ever heard of the CIA attempting to conduct this kind of high-risk operation with designs for a nuclear bomb. The former officials also said these kind of programmes must be closely monitored by senior CIA managers in order to control the flow of information to the adversary. If mishandled, they could easily help an enemy accelerate its weapons development. That may be what happened with Merlin.

Iran has spent nearly 20 years trying to develop nuclear weapons, and in the process has created a strong base of sophisticated scientists knowledgeable enough to spot flaws in nuclear blueprints. Tehran also obtained nuclear blueprints from the network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, and so already had workable blueprints against which to compare the designs obtained from the CIA. Nuclear experts say that they would thus be able to extract valuable information from the blueprints while ignoring the flaws.

"If [the flaw] is bad enough," warned a nuclear weapons expert with the IAEA, "they will find it quite quickly. That would be my fear"

Microsoft Helps China Police The Net

I woke up today and read on the news that Microsoft has helped China police the internet by removing a blog by a Chinese student named Zhao Jing. What is really amazing is that the site itself is hosted in the US. Why a site hosted in the US is obeying Chinese law hasn't yet been explained by Microsoft as of this writing.

And the answer is because Microsoft has no tangible explanation. But we here at the Conspiracy Zone do have a explanation. The answer is Microsoft is not a company which cares about democracy or freedom of speech. Microsoft is a company which cares about profits, no matter what the cost.

Microsoft claims that its policy is to follow local laws. I guess that means laws which allow a repressive communist government to regulate and control its people. A government which, a few weeks ago, slaughtered an entire village of people just so it could take their land.

Yes, this is the type of local laws Microsoft submits to. And yet, this is the same company where millions of Americans are going to go out and buy a new Xbox 360 from. This is also the same company where millions of Americans will soon be buying the Windows Vista operating system from.

Microsoft is a company concerned with greed and not human rights. But it is beyond just greed. Microsoft and its founders are members of organizations like the Bilderberg Group which not only seek wealth and power, but want full control over the entire world.

They use their power and influence in order to help non democratic countries repress and hurt their people. In the long run, this will have detrimental effects on the world as we know it. My best advice to everyone is to boycott Microsoft as much as possible and don't buy their products!

Internet 2: Why You Should Avoid It At All Costs

The internet as we know it today has become one of the greatest technological marvels the world has ever seen. People from all walks of life are able to get online and build blogs and sites in which they can express themselves in anyway they choose.

This makes the government and big corporations very angry. The internet as we know it today originated from Arpanet and the world wide web itself was designed by Tim Berners Lee. The internet was never intended to be given to the common people. It was intended to be used by the military and government exclusively.

Allowing the internet to fall into the hands of people like you and me was the biggest mistake they ever made. Now writers, artists, programmers, and many other professionals are able to make money without the watchful eyes of the government.

Alternative news sites and blogs like The Conspiracy Zone and others have become a beacon of truth for those wanting to escape the corporate whitewash which has become the mainstream media. Major newspaper companies all over the US have begun to go bankrupt.

And millions of Americans are starting to pay more attention to alternative news sites than CNN and the New York Times. People freely trade movies and music which they purchased, causing fear in the RIAA and MPAA.

Yes, the internet has changed the world. But the government wants to shut it down. They want to take back control of what was once originally their own. They know they can't directly shut down the internet, do to an outrage on the part of the people.

So what they've done is create a corporate controlled Internet 2. Right now it is in its early stages and is only available on college campuses. But soon an attempt will be made to bring internet 2 into your home, and to slowly take away your rights and your ability to express yourself.

All the evidence shows the internet 2 will be used to crush the small but growing segment of home based businesses which have made a living based on the internet by heavily taxing domains and requiring licensing. Then only the big corporations will be able to flourish, as they do offline.

Kofi Annan and the UN wants to take control of the internet from the US and give it to countries like China and others who do not cherish democracy. It is up to us to fight back.

What can you do? First, don't fall prey to the propaganda that will be put on TV in the next few years that tell you how great Internet 2 is, and how its better than Internet 1 Second, start your own site and blogs and tell everyone about the conspiracy behind internet 2. Boycott internet 2 and stand up for internet 1. Your future depends on it!

Why Bombing Iran Could Set The Stage For World War 3

Recently I carried an article here on the Conspiracy Zone about Iran's response to threats from the US and Israel that they would begin a bombing campaign this year. Iran has threatened a "crushing response" if they are attacked.

In this article I wanted to explain why the bombing of Iran could set the stage for World War 3 in the near future. Based on the detailed studies I've done on history and current events, all the evidence shows that the stage is being set for another great war.

The reason for the US wanting to bomb Iran is supposedly due to their ability to produce nuclear weapons. These are the same people that said Saddam had WMDs and could kill us with a massive terrorist attack. As usual these claims are spins are just plain lies.

All the intelligence shows that Iran won't have the capability of producing a nuke for at least nine or ten years. The real reason for the US and Israel attacking Iran is because Iran is a rogue government which is not under direct control of the globalists.

The globalists want to use the US as a pawn in order to start a war with Iran. But there is a problem for the US. Russia and China in the last year have conducted joint military exercises with each other and have vowed in 2006 to strengthen their ties both culturally and economically.

The real reason China and Russia are working together is because the US has established a military presence in Central Asia which they consider to be a threat.

Russia has begin selling uranium/plutonium to Iran which will give them the ability of producing a nuclear weapon. This can only mean one thing. The globalists are prepared to bring about another world war that the US may not be able to win.

With the weak results of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the US is losing support with its allies. Most foreign nations which at the beginning of the second Iraq War supported the US have now pulled out their troops. This means if a conflict breaks out between the US, Russia, China, and Iran, the EU and other nations may be reluctant to intervene.

The danger is clear. The US is being set up for a major fall and many of its citizens are not even aware of it. It is up to us to make everyone aware of this pending disaster. Another world war will give the UN and globalists an excuse to push harder for a one world government.

Iran Threatens 'Crushing' Response If Attacked

Newsmax | January 2 2006

TEHRAN -- Iran warned Sunday of a "crushing" response if its nuclear and military facilities are attacked by the United States or Israel.

Top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said, however, talk of such an attack most likely is "psychological warfare."

"Iran has prepared itself...they will get a crushing response if they make such a mistake," Larijani said on Iranian television late Sunday.

Larijani said Israel would "suffer greatly" if it launched an attack.

"If there is any truth in such talks, Israel will suffer greatly. It's a very small country within our range."

"Our (defense) preparedness is a deterrence," he said.

He also said a Russian proposal the two countries enrich uranium on Russian territory could not ignore Iran's right to carry out enrichment at home.

"It's not logical for a country to put the fate of its nation at the disposal of another country, even if it's a friend. You can meet part of your fuel needs from abroad."

"But is there a guarantee that nuclear fuel producers won't play with you over price or other things? History and experience show that if you don't have technology, you will damage your independence," he said.

Larijani's remarks coincided with Tehran's announcement it had produced equipment for separating uranium from its ore, a fresh development in Tehran's drive to control the whole nuclear fuel cycle - from mining uranium to enriching it for use in atomic reactors.

European news media have indicated in recent days the United States is preparing its allies for a strike against Iran's nuclear and military facilities with the aim of curtailing Iran's nuclear program.

Reports of a strike escalated after comments by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who called Israel a "disgraceful blot" that should be "wiped off the map" and his call to relocate Israel to Europe or North America.

Recent visits to Turkey by CIA Director Porter Goss, head of the FBI, NATO General Secretary Jaap De Hoop Scheffer and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have increased speculation about a possible military strike against Iran. NATO member Turkey is Iran's northwestern neighbour.

President George W. Bush has said his administration would not exclude the possibility of using military force against Iran over its nuclear program, which the United States believes is aimed at producing weapons.

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker magazine in Janurary last year the Bush administration had been "conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran" to gather intelligence and targeting information. U.S. Defence Department officials said the article was filled with mistakes but did not deny its basic point.

Israel fears Iran is reaching a point of no return in nuclear technology. Iran has openly said it has already achieved proficiency in cycle of nuclear fuel, a technology that can be used to produce fuel for reactors to generate electricity or materials for a bomb.

The United States and European Union have backed a Russian proposal to move Iran's uranium-enrichment program to Russian territory. The proposal aims to ensure Iran cannot use uranium enrichment to build nuclear weapons. Enrichment is a key process that can produce either fuel for a nuclear reactor or the material for a warhead.

Larijani said Iran needs talks with Moscow to clarify what he described as "ambiguities" but said the proposal can't deny Iran uranium enrichment at home.

"The proposal is too general. If it talks about denying Iran of its rights, no. We have no right to do it," he said.

"But we have to study it and see if Iran's interests can be met. It can be a complimentary."

"There is no reason to reject it before discussions and accurate study," he said.

Larijani is secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Iran's top security decision-making body that handles Iran's nuclear talks.

He said the Russian proposal will have nothing to do with nuclear talks among Iran and Britain, France and Germany. The talks last month made little progress and are to continue later this month.

The Conspiracy of Intelligent Design Versus Evolution

The new year has begun and I wanted to start things off by writing about a topic that has recently been at the center of a serious debate here in the US. This debate is about Intelligent Design and how it should be taught in schools along with and as an alternative to Evolution.

To anyone who is familiar with the workings and plans of the globalists/Illuminati, this is a clear strategy by them in order to "dumb down" the population by weakening science in the US and pushing theories which are not scientific.

Intelligent Design is merely a scientific sounding word which has the same meaning as creationism. One of the first things any scientist learns in school is that if something "cannot be proven or more importanly disproven", it is not scientific. It must be able to be measured in some way.

During World War 2, the Nazi government called in nearly 100 scientists to refute Einstein's theory of relativity. Einstein is reported to have said "It doesn't take 100 scientists to refute my theory. It only takes one fact."

Proponents of Intelligent Design have no way of measuring or disproving their own theory. They have no facts which prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that their theory is true. Therefore it is not scientific and should not be taught in schools. This doesn't mean Intelligent Design isn't true. It just means it hasn't been proven and therefore is not scientific

While Evolution, like any theory, has its problems, it has been verified time and again that the theory is factual and valid. Many religious people believe Charles Darwin said humans "descended from the apes."

According to Ph.D Michio Kaku, Darwin never said this. He said that humans descended from an ancestor that shared a genetic link or trait with ape like species. It is not exactly the same thing.

But the more important questions that has to be asked is why is this debate being brought up here in the US? Why aren't other countries debating about this issue? In Europe even the common uneducated person believes in Evolution.

The answer is clear. The debate between Intelligent Design versus Evolution is a false debate funded by large corporate interests in order to further dumb down the population. George W. Bush and his administration have greatly hurt the scientific community since taking office in the year 2000.

Despite the great promises offered by stem cell research, the Bush admin has all but outlawed it, forcing American scientists to relocate in Europe and Asia, creating a "brain drain" out of the US. The plan of the globalists is to block any technology which could be used to help people or prolong their lifespan. Remember in the Global 2000 plan the globalists want to reduce the world's population. Allowing technology like stem cells to be promoted won't allow them to easily achieve this goal.

This is not an accident. The globalists want to destroy the US, and the best way to do this is to destroy the educational system and dumb down the population, which is successfully being done in many cases.

In order for the US to remain a technological super power, we need to stop allowing our religious believe to interfere with our scientific advancement.