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11/15/2002



Atomic Weapons Pre-Positioned on U.S. Soil :.

Update: This article was retracted by Asia Times. I'm leaving it up, however, just because it was interesting.

Here's what Asia Times said about the article:

THE BIG HOAX: WE FELL FOR IT
Asia Times Online uploaded an article in this space entitled Apocalypse Now, or Alottanukes soon. The article has been withdrawn as it was based on the transcript of an interview that now appears to have been a hoax. We sincerely apologize to readers who were alarmed by the contents of the article. We thank those readers who pointed us to this page in antivirus.about.com, which, we would add, does not appear in a Google search for the name "Usuquf" or "Asuquf". We'd also like to point out that we added a caveat at the top of the article that "the identity of the man [al-Usuquf] has not been confirmed, nor has his membership within al-Qaeda".


Well, if any of this is true, it's Miller Time. Put this one at the front of your "Stuff of Nightmares" folder. I wouldn't have posted this at all if the source was some freak backwater site like my mine. But this was on the front page of Asia Times, a major Asian news site. All I can say is that I hope I'm lucky enough to be within the primary blast radius of one of these eggs, because things will definitely suck further out:

The means? "Atomic bombs." Al-Usuquf's most startling revelation is that the bombs "won't be
launched, they are already there".

"Seven nuclear heads have already been positioned on American soil, before September 11, and they are ready to be detonated. Before September 11, American security was a fiasco, and even later, if we needed, we could position the bombs there. They arrived through seaports, as normal cargo. A nuclear head is not bigger than a fridge, so it can easily be camouflaged as one. Thousands of containers arrive at a seaport every day, and even with very efficient security, it's impossible to check and examine each one of them."

Al-Usuquf says that the bombs were bought on the black market: five from the former USSR and two from Pakistan. The five Russian heads "are from T-3 missiles, also known as RD-107, and their power is around 100 kilotons each, that is five times the Hiroshima bomb. The Pakistani ones are less powerful, something around 10 kilotons each."

Each of the Russian bombs would have cost around $200 million. Al-Qaeda was able to raise the money "because we have many sponsors. Many countries sponsor us, and also some very rich people." And not all of these are Arab countries. "Some European countries as well are also interested in the fall of the US." As to the "rich people", they are "people who are also tired of seeing the US bleeding the rest of the world."


Research Credit: pr0spero


11/14/2002



Merry Christmas: Prepare for War :.

"We're going to war, and there's not a damn thing the inspectors can do to stop it, and that's a shame. Inspections worked once and they can work again," Ritter said Wednesday night during a speech at the California Institute for Technology.

The wording of the U.N. resolution will allow the United States to attack by mid-December, said Ritter, who was chief weapons inspector for the U.N. Special Commission in Iraq from 1991 to 1998.





Interesting Hits Today

Update: Thu Nov 14 02 at 04:40:53 PM 192.5.18.32 ws18-32.darpa.mil
Now we're talkin'! Greetings, gentlemen.

Thu Nov 14 02 at 01:44:11 PM 208.244.233.99 extcachen.lucasfilm.com
May the Force be with me. Couple from here, actually.

Thu Nov 14 02 at 01:26:19 PM 198.26.74.100 WCS2-PENT.NIPR.MIL
Internet gateway for classified military networks. Couple from here, too.

Thu Nov 14 02 at 12:27:25 PM 164.214.4.61 relay5.nima.mil
Watch us watch you. Imaging spooks.

Thu Nov 14 02 at 08:43:34 AM 204.128.192.51 proxy2.disney.com
It's for the children.





Soldiers on the Streets :.

"If local law enforcement is totally overwhelmed, would not the military be perhaps the best to help for that interim period until the local law enforcement can reconstitute itself?'' Warner said in an interview Tuesday.

Research Credit: BW





Information Awareness Office Goes Mainstream :.

Drudge gets about 5 million hits per day.

You Are a Suspect

Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend � all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."

To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you � passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance � and you have the supersnoop's dream: a "Total Information Awareness" about every U.S. citizen.


Research Credit: TR


11/13/2002



Note to Cryptogon Readers

Today's update is large, but the articles are very important. Please try to find time to read these articles (not necessarily my comments). They're excellent.

I can barely keep up with all the stories that are coming out now. Information directly related to the dire political and economic situation on this planet is coming from all sides; established media, freak media, individuals, Left, Right, Center and Fringe. There is a flood of information. The pace is accelerating. Can you feel it?

Something big is going to happen. I don't know when exactly, but the Them need to hit the reset switch again because too much damaging information is beginning to creep into more established media. There must be a crisis because too many people are starting to "get" it. Perhaps the war with Iraq (weeks away) will suffice, but I don't think so. The dissenting voices, and there are many on all continents, need to be drowned out by a din of well groomed imbecile-experts calling for more Machiavellian solutions. Only the diabolical theater provided by images of dead women and children, and their sobbing friends and relatives, re-run endlessly on global TV networks, will shock the public into believing the government shills. So, keep your eyes open and use your skills of discernment when presented with the next crisis.

I wasn't planning to continue with this, but I need to comment on what I'm hearing on the radio:

I'm listening to Michael Levine and Gary Null talking with each other on KPFK, 90.7fm in Los Angeles. Mike Levine just said words to the effect: "Gary, you know that you and I are on the federal take-down list, right?" Gary Null responded, "I'm fully aware of that." This is interesting because I feel that there is a slight chance that I will be taken down at some point. But you know what? I'm sure Mike Levine and Gary Null would agree with me when I say: There's nothing to be afraid of.

Think about it in terms of the universe. Who cares? So, if you just do what you know is right, who cares what the Them do to you?! People write in, thanking me for what I'm doing, but expressing concern for my safety. They say they're afraid to undertake similar activism. Think about it this way. If you aren't an eye-witness to a crime and you're not in a position to blow any current or future operations, chances are, you will be left alone. (Don't get me wrong, people get disappeared and suicided all the time.) The only thing I hope, if they do indeed take a bunch of us down, is that they put us all in the same pen, cage or camp. I wouldn't mind hanging out with Noam Chomsky, Mike Ruppert, Gary Webb and some of these other guys for a while....Even if we're surrounded by razor wire, numb nuts with guns and barking attack dogs.

If the chance to hang out with aging dissidents in a concentration camp doesn't float your boat, just think about what Obe-Wan Kenobe said to Darth Vader!

"You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

And what did the old man do after he said that to the Dark Lord? He switched off his light saber.





Random Traffic Stops Begin in Michigan :.

People, it is GAME OVER! Ever read these words?

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

---The Constitution of the United States of America, Amendment IV


Grab your ankles, folks, here it comes:

Federal agents will begin randomly stopping traffic today, looking for illegal immigrants, terrorists and drug or weapon smugglers.

Cars will be stopped at unannounced, rotating checkpoints within Michigan, including metro Detroit. U.S. Border Patrol agents at the checkpoints will ask passengers their citizenship and will have leeway to ask a host of follow-up questions.

The effort is part of President George W. Bush's attempt to increase security along the northern border, said Immigration and Naturalization spokeswoman Karen Kraushaar.


Note: If you mention the U.S. Constitution at a checkpoint, law enforcement officials have been told to report you to the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. FBI Memo 1. FBI Memo 2.





The Horror of Russia's Atrocities in Chechnya :.

Putin apparently lost it when a reporter began to question Russia's policies in Chechnya. What is happening in Chechnya, and why did Putin get so upset?

I wasn't going to post this Newsweek story on Chechnya because I thought it was too shocking, even for my site. I was basically traumatized from reading this. I have a formal education in international security studies. I have, on my own, studied most regional and sub-regional conflicts that have occurred over the past 50 years. I thought I'd heard it all when I read about Pol Pot in Cambodia. I thought I'd heard it all when I read about the Contras in Nicaragua. Timor. Yugoslavia. Etc. Having said all of that, I have never encountered anything that approaches what is happening, right now, in Chechnya. The situation in Chechnya more closely resembles a tribal blood feud than any kind of conventional war.

Oh ya: Bush considers Putin an ally in the "War on Terror."

WARNING: Do not read unless you are prepared to handle unimaginable descriptions of violence, torture, murder, rape and destruction.

We heard shots and the screams of 15-year-old Aminat, the sister of Ahmed and Aslanbek. 'Let her be!' screamed one of the brothers. 'Kill us instead!' Then we heard more shots. Through the window we saw a half-dressed OMON commander lying on top of Aminat. She was covered in blood from the bullet wounds. Another soldier shouted, 'Hurry up, Kolya, while she's still warm'."

Sometimes those who survive wish they were dead, as in Zernovodsk this summer, when townspeople say they were chased onto a field and made to watch women being raped. When their men tried to defend them, 68 of them were handcuffed to an armored truck and raped, too. After this episode, 45 of them joined the guerrillas in the mountains. One older man, Nurdi Dayeyev, who was nearly blind, had nails driven through his hands and feet because it was suspected that he was in contact with the fighters. When relatives later retrieved his remains, he was missing a hand.


Research Credit: DG





MI6 Halted Bid to Arrest bin Laden :.

With each passing day, it's becoming increasingly clear that U.S. and British spooks are allowing all of this nonsense to come down for political reasons:

British intelligence paid large sums of money to an al-Qaeda cell in Libya in a doomed attempt to assassinate Colonel Gadaffi in 1996 and thwarted early attempts to bring Osama bin Laden to justice.

The latest claims of MI6 involvement with Libya's fearsome Islamic Fighting Group, which is connected to one of bin Laden's trusted lieutenants, will be embarrassing to the Government, which described similar claims by renegade MI5 officer David Shayler as 'pure fantasy'.

The allegations have emerged in the book Forbidden Truth , published in America by two French intelligence experts who reveal that the first Interpol arrest warrant for bin Laden was issued by Libya in March 1998.

According to journalist Guillaume Dasqui� and Jean-Charles Brisard, an adviser to French President Jacques Chirac, British and US intelligence agencies buried the fact that the arrest warrant had come from Libya and played down the threat. Five months after the warrant was issued, al-Qaeda killed more than 200 people in the truck bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.





King George's Dilemma :.

This is the best essay I have seen on current U.S. exigencies. The piece is excellent because it includes the historical context for the situation in which we find ourselves. Please read, absorb and distribute it widely.

We now face an economic elite not of greed, but one with an invincible resolve "to take it all"- "it" meaning wealth. Like the gangster Willie Sutton robbing banks because "that is where the money is," elites themselves loot into bankruptcy even the corporations they own. Their opulence seems, to them, meager even as a typical CEO among Fortune's 500 receives in half a day what his hourly employee earns for an entire year, a pay differential over ten times the amount of twenty-five years ago.

Among the most posh of the reigning corporate legion are the top 100 where yearly compensation accelerated from $1.3 million three decades ago to today's $37.5 million, rising from 39 times to 1,000 times above the average pay. The wealthiest one percent, who held 22 percent of the nation's wealth in 1975, now possesses 42 percent. Combining last year's federal tax reduction with the proposed removal of estate taxes ingeniously results in a "fair-share" 40 percent of the benefits going to the same most affluent one percent. It is just another reallocation, from the public treasury to the private domain, of riches flowing unto the tiny few already bloating with magnificent fortunes.

Unwavering and shameless to "get it all," a revitalized generation of robber barons knows no bounds. "The ability to magnetize shareholder ignorance," Warren Buffet of CEO fame admits, "has probably never been exceeded."

Yet, this take-it-all effort is not just about wealth. The elite needs enormous power, i.e. the capacity to transfer any source of wealth from one to another - namely, from all of us and into the private accounts of the economic elite. Such clout must be sufficient not just to seize wealth wherever it exists as a "pot of gold," but to preserve and confiscate the world's prevailing and basic source of energy as its very own wealth- oil.





White House 'Bonesman' Leads Nation Into the Dark :.

"My senior year (at Yale University) I joined Skull and Bones, a secret society," President Bush wrote in his autobiography, "so secret, I can't say anything more."

He doesn't have to. He's practically turning the government into a secret society - an old-boy, throwback establishment that even holds its secret spy-court proceedings in an elaborately locked, windowless room that sounds similar to the Bones' elaborately locked, practically windowless "tomb," or campus clubhouse.

Bush, a loyal and particularly active member of Skull and Bones, a mysterious, historically misogynist Yale-based secret society, seems to have done almost all he can to promote a level of secrecy in government not seen since the Nixon administration.


11/12/2002



A New Age of Empire :.

If this Crusade doesn't touch off World War III, I will be shocked and amazed. The difference between the most recent time the West tried this and today is that there were no force multipliers, asymmetric methods and wildcards available to the previously conquered peoples. Today, Western societies can be brought down by things that fit in the trunks of cars. Think about it as Bush and Blair head down this road to ruin. The enemies of the West (hundreds of millions) will only have to get lucky once with, say, a nuclear weapon. The imperial powers of old never had to worry about such things. We are in very new and dangerous territory:

British Member of Parliament George Galloway says that a plan for the division of the Middle East is circulating in the corridors of power on both sides of the Atlantic. In a recent interview, Galloway asserted that ministers and eminent figures in the British government are deliberating the partition of the Middle East, harking back to the colonial map-making in the first quarter of the 20th century that established the modern nation-states of the region. An Anglo-American war against Iraq, he tells me, could be the opening salvo in the break up of the region. Galloway, who met with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad this August, states that the war aims of the US and Britain go well beyond replacing the Iraqi leader. "They include a recasting of the entire Middle East, the better to ensure the hegemony of the big powers over the natural resources of the Middle East and the safety and security of the vanguard of imperialist interests in the area - the state of Israel. And part of that is actually redrawing boundaries."

Research Credit: DG





For Richer :. (Very long article)

Yesterday I laughed at the New York Times. But, hey, even that rag gets it semi-correct once in a while. I agree with a lot of what's in this piece, but it doesn't go far enough and I think Mr. Krugman is dreaming if he thinks more taxes are the answer, and that the 50s and 60s are something to shoot for economically. Raise taxes, and then what, Mr. Krugman, funnel it all back to the usual suspects via government programs? Don't empower the monster with more tax revenue. Make it illegal for a CEO to make more than 100X the lowest paid employee. Don't tax them and empower the useless government. The only thing I want the government to do is prevent the accumulation of destabilizing amounts of wealth. Force a more equitable distribution, and LET US FIGURE OUT THE REST.

This is not rocket science that requires a new government agency. It boils down to this: Less money at the top, more money at the bottom, smaller government. The normal "liberal" view is tax more, make government bigger, get people dependent on government programs and funnel funds back to the people and corporations causing the problems in the first place. No. Sorry, man. I want to be paid more for the work I do and I want to be left alone by the government. Got it? Well let me wave my magic wand: *poof* Wait. It didn't work. Dammit, I think my wand is made by Microsoft.

Kevin Phillips concludes his book ''Wealth and Democracy'' with a grim warning: ''Either democracy must be renewed, with politics brought back to life, or wealth is likely to cement a new and less democratic regime -- plutocracy by some other name.'' It's a pretty extreme line, but we live in extreme times. Even if the forms of democracy remain, they may become meaningless. It's all too easy to see how we may become a country in which the big rewards are reserved for people with the right connections; in which ordinary people see little hope of advancement; in which political involvement seems pointless, because in the end the interests of the elite always get served.

Research Credit: TR





Trust Voting Machines? :.

Count me as one of those experts who says they can't be trusted. The problem is that these machines have no audit trail. They have no paper trail. I am a software engineer whose minor in college was accounting. If I created a system for accounting for money that had no paper trail for auditors to follow, the IRS would put me into jail. Yet for some reason it's okay if we create a system for accounting for votes that has no paper trail? Since when did our right to vote become less important than the almighty dollar?

There's no replacement for paper. Even electronic cash registers and ATM machines produce paper -- they have a paper tape in them that records every transaction, so that if the electronic gadgetry goes down, the paper tape can be examined. Electronic accounting entries can be gimmicked in the computer databases, or just plain dumped into /dev/null. It's hard to gimmick up an entire roll of cash register tape -- and if the IRS audits you, the cash register tape is likely to be the first thing they want to see.


See also: International Banking Software and Services Company "Counts" Your Votes

Research Credit: JM


11/11/2002



Information Awareness Office Raising Surveillance Bigtop :.

This is old news to my readers. I think the most newsworthy aspect of this is that the NY Times finally decided to cover it. Check out my IAO coverage from, uh, months ago. Good job, NY Times! Better late than never, eh? Don't mind my incoherent laughter and bird flipping, etc. at THE "newspaper of record" in the U.S.:

The Pentagon is constructing a computer system that could create a vast electronic dragnet, searching for personal information as part of the hunt for terrorists around the globe � including the United States.

As the director of the effort, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, has described the system in Pentagon documents and in speeches, it will provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from Internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents, without a search warrant.

Historically, military and intelligence agencies have not been permitted to spy on Americans without extraordinary legal authorization. But Admiral Poindexter, the former national security adviser in the Reagan administration, has argued that the government needs broad new powers to process, store and mine billions of minute details of electronic life in the United States.

Admiral Poindexter, who has described the plan in public documents and speeches but declined to be interviewed, has said that the government needs to "break down the stovepipes" that separate commercial and government databases, allowing teams of intelligence agency analysts to hunt for hidden patterns of activity with powerful computers.

"We must become much more efficient and more clever in the ways we find new sources of data, mine information from the new and old, generate information, make it available for analysis, convert it to knowledge, and create actionable options," he said in a speech in California earlier this year.


Research Credit: Multiple Readers





Beware of Imbeciles Impersonating Saints

It's fitting that in the End Days (completely non-religious reference, by the way) George Bush would be depicted as a saint.

Forget the stunning propaganda potential of this image. My hat is off to this photographer. He took full advantage of the circumstances, premeditated the outcome he wanted, lined it up, set the focus and waited for the right gestures. Nailed it. Absolutely. Notice the depth of field on the halo/Seal of the President, you don't want that too sharp. This shot is one in a million. A bunch of guys could try to get something close to this, but getting Numb Nuts to look more like a saint than a real saint again, man, don't hold your breath. I think this is a more accurate representation, but that's just my opinion.

President George W. Bush answers a question during his press conference in Washington November 7, 2002. Bush, who has vowed to disarm Iraq by force if necessary, said he would deal differently with the threat posed by North Korea's nuclear weapons program. (Win McNamee/Reuters Thu Nov 7, 5:18 PM ET)



Research Credit: TR




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:. Reading

Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture by Andrew Kimbrell Readers will come to see that industrial food production is indeed a "fatal harvest" - fatal to consumers, as pesticide residues and new disease vectors such as E. coli and "mad cow disease" find their way into our food supply; fatal to our landscapes, as chemical runoff from factory farms poison our rivers and groundwater; fatal to genetic diversity, as farmers rely increasingly on high-yield monocultures and genetically engineered crops; and fatal to our farm communities, which are wiped out by huge corporate farms.

Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America by Bertram Myron Gross This is a relatively short but extremely cogent and well-argued treatise on the rise of a form of fascistic thought and social politics in late 20th century America. Author Bertram Gross' thesis is quite straightforward; the power elite that comprises the corporate, governmental and military superstructure of the country is increasingly inclined to employ every element in their formidable arsenal of 'friendly persuasion' to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Americans through what Gross refers to as friendly fascism.

The Good Life
by Scott and Helen Nearing
Helen and Scott Nearing are the great-grandparents of the back-to-the-land movement, having abandoned the city in 1932 for a rural life based on self-reliance, good health, and a minimum of cash...Fascinating, timely, and wholly useful, a mix of the Nearings' challenging philosophy and expert counsel on practical skills.

Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth by David Bollierd In Silent Theft, David Bollier argues that a great untold story of our time is the staggering privatization and abuse of our common wealth. Corporations are engaged in a relentless plunder of dozens of resources that we collectively own—publicly funded medical breakthroughs, software innovation, the airwaves, the public domain of creative works, and even the DNA of plants, animals and humans. Too often, however, our government turns a blind eye—or sometimes helps give away our assets. Amazingly, the silent theft of our shared wealth has gone largely unnoticed because we have lost our ability to see the commons.

The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It: The Complete Back-To-Basics Guide by John Seymour The Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It is the only book that teaches all the skills needed to live independently in harmony with the land harnessing natural forms of energy, raising crops and keeping livestock, preserving foodstuffs, making beer and wine, basketry, carpentry, weaving, and much more.

When Corporations Rule the World by David C. Korten When Corporations Rule the World explains how economic globalization has concentrated the power to govern in global corporations and financial markets and detached them from accountability to the human interest. It documents the devastating human and environmental consequences of the successful efforts of these corporations to reconstruct values and institutions everywhere on the planet to serve their own narrow ends.

The New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener This expansion of a now-classic guide originally published in 1989 is intended for the serious gardener or small-scale market farmer. It describes practical and sustainable ways of growing superb organic vegetables, with detailed coverage of scale and capital, marketing, livestock, the winter garden, soil fertility, weeds, and many other topics.