9/11 Was An Inside Job

The son of the man who built the Sydney Opera House - himself a highly respected architect - gets the usual "batshit crazy" treatment from the media but makes his opinion clear.

Utzon's son signs up for September 11 conspiracy theory

''I think it is important that we get all the things on the table, all the different facts, and see what is actually right,'' Mr Utzon tells Mr Gage. ''Because if somebody, they are indeed trying to cover something up, it is good to get it out in the open. Because what else would they be covering up?''

Speaking in a corridor in the Sydney Opera House, Mr Gage reveals that Mr Utzon signed a petition organised by his organisation, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, demanding an inquiry a year ago.

Contacted yesterday about the comments, Mr Utzon said he was ''a bit surprised'' that the video had been posted. Yet he repeated his call for an investigation and said distrust of the media was a significant driver of that.

''I have an inborn sense [that] what is coming out in the media is slightly, or to a large extent, a distorted version of what actually happened,'' Mr Utzon said. ''This comes right back from where my father had to leave the Opera House job here in Sydney and consequent media reports on his life and his doings.''

Mr Monsieur? Really?

BBC News - Belgian pleads guilty to US-Iran arms sales charges

Mr Monsieur... real name?

How The Game Works

Tensions high at climate deal crunch time - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Mr Rudd today announced the Government was doubling compensation for the coal sector and more than doubling it for electricity generators in an attempt to win Coalition support and get the deal through the Senate before the end of the week.

Blair's War

Iraq war inquiry Tony Blair invasion

British military commanders are expected to tell an inquiry into the Iraq war, which opens today, that the invasion was ill-conceived and that preparations were sabotaged by Tony Blair's government's attempts to mislead the public.

They were so shocked by the lack of preparation for the aftermath of the invasion that they believe members of the British and US governments at the time could be prosecuted for war crimes by breaching the duty outlined in the Geneva Conventions to safeguard civilians in a conflict.

The lengths the Blair government took to conceal the invasion plan and the extent of military commanders' anger at what they call the government's ''appalling'' failures emerged as Sir John Chilcot, the inquiry's chairman, promised to produce a ''full and insightful'' account of how Britain was drawn into the conflict.

Fresh evidence indicates how Mr Blair misled MPs by claiming in 2002 the goal was ''disarmament, not regime change''. Documents show the government wanted to hide its true intentions by informing only ''very small numbers'' of officials.

The documents, leaked to London's Sunday Telegraph, are ''post-operational reports'' and ''lessons learned'' papers compiled by the army and its field commanders. The deep hostility of Britain's senior military commanders towards their US allies is also disclosed in the classified government documents leaked to the Telegraph.

In an interview for the Chilcot inquiry, Colonel J.K. Tanner, the British chief of staff in Iraq, described his US counterparts as ''a group of Martians'' for whom ''dialogue is alien''. He added: ''Despite our so-called 'special relationship', I reckon we were treated no differently to the Portuguese.''

Colonel Tanner's boss, Major-General Andrew Stewart, the top British operational commander in Iraq, told how ''a significant amount of my time'' had been spent ''evading'' and ''refusing'' orders from his US superiors.

At least once, according to the papers, General Stewart's refusal to obey an order resulted in Britain's ambassador to Washington, Sir David Manning, being called to the US State Department for a diplomatic reprimand - of the kind usually delivered to ''rogue states'' such as Zimbabwe.

One commander said the government ''missed a golden opportunity'' to win support from Iraqis. Another commented: ''It was not unlike 1750s colonialism where the military had to do everything ourselves.'' One, describing the supply chain, added: ''I know for a fact that there was one container full of skis in the desert.''

The ''lessons learned" report said: ''Never again must we send ill-equipped soldiers into battle.''

Significantly, the documents support what officials have earlier admitted - that the army was not allowed to prepare properly for the Iraq invasion in 2002 so as not to alert Parliament and the UN that Mr Blair was already determined to go to war.

Mr Blair had in effect promised the US president, George Bush, that he would join the US-led invasion when, as late as July 2002, he was denying to MPs that preparations were being made for military action.

Guardian News & Media;

Telegraph, London

We All Know That Feeling, Right?

Well, maybe not quite.

Doctors thought he was in a coma, but he was in fact conscious

A Belgian man thought to have been in a coma for 23 years has told of his "second birth" after doctors realised he was in fact conscious, a German weekly reported.

Medical staff believed Rom Houben had been left in a vegetative state by a serious car accident, but he was simply paralysed and unable to communicate.

The former engineering student and martial arts enthusiast, now 46, told Der Spiegel that he meditated to pass the long years trapped in his own body.

Houben's true condition was discovered following new tests at the University of Liege, in eastern Belgium, which found that his brain was still functioning.

Using a specially-adapted computer to type messages, Houben has been able to describe the ordeal he endured for more than two decades.

"I cried out, but no-one heard me," he said, "I will never forget the day they discovered me - it was my second birth."

bLAIR'S wAR

Blair misled MPs on Iraq war: papers

Blair misled MPs on Iraq war: papers

By Europe correspondent Emma Alberici

Posted 10 hours 40 minutes ago
Updated 5 hours 39 minutes ago
Troops in Basra: the leaked reports reveal that Britain was not prepared for war

Troops in Basra: the leaked reports reveal that Britain was not prepared for war (AFP: Toby Melville)

Secret British government papers reveal that former prime minister Tony Blair misled MPs and the public about the reasons the country was going to war in Iraq.

Britain's Sunday Telegraph has published correspondence between military commanders and their political masters.

The correspondence shows that in July 2002, Mr Blair told the public and MPs that Britain's objective in Iraq was "disarmament, not regime change", and that there had been no plan for military action.

But the documents reveal that a full invasion of Iraq was being planned five months earlier.

The leaked reports also reveal that Britain was not prepared for war and was under-equipped when the invasion began in 2003.

The need to conceal that fact had "constrained" the planning process and the result was a "rushed" operation "lacking in coherence and resources", which caused "significant risk" to troops and "critical failure" in the post-war period.

The revelations come two days before public hearings begin in the Iraq inquiry.

The Sheep Awake

Guardian Report: US Setting Aside $1.3 Billion For Anti-Taliban Afghan Militias

1.3 billion something is wrong here wish we could audit this money and see where it is really going?????????? that's 1,300,000,000 of your tax money and I do not think it will go to who they say.......­.......cal­l me a skeptic

The Mysterious US Media

Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

The Washington Post has known since 2005 in exactly which countries the CIA maintained its illegal, secret prisons but still refuses to say, even though they've now been banned by Executive Order and even though Lithuania and Poland are launching investigations which the Post could easily answer, but chooses not to.

Throw Out The Case?

First Obama, now his AG... In any fair trial, this would be enough to get the case thrown out.

September 11 accused to explain why

"I have every confidence that the nation and the world will see him for the coward that he is," Holder told the committee.

Shock! Horror!

Pro-Israel lobby group bankrolling Tories, film claims | Politics | The Guardian

50% of MPs in the shadow cabinet are Conservative Friends of Israel members, according to Channel 4's Dispatches.

Was Hasan Working Undercover?

A comment from Zelikow? And more "anonymous White House officials"? Why...?

Obama orders inquiry into handling of Hasan intelligence:

Perhaps more than most of Hasan's actions, it was the e-mail contact with Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki that had independent analysts and some members of Congress demanding an investigation.

"I was startled," said Philip Zelikow, who was the executive director of the bipartisan commission that investigated the 2001 terrorist attacks. "Awlaki is a (Sept. 11) loose end. ... It should have set off some questions."

U.S. government agents knew that Hasan had exchanged 10 to 20 e-mails starting last December with Awlaki, a New Mexico-born Muslim cleric who grew up in Yemen and was linked in the 9-11 Commission's final report to at least two of the 2001 hijackers.

Awlaki's response was limited - only two of Hasan's messages were returned - and didn't encourage violence. In fact, one of them advised Hasan not to violate any laws, according to an official at the House Intelligence Committee, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorize to talk about the investigation.

Anthrax!

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE ANTHRAX ATTACKS AND ITS COVER-UP:

Bruce Ivins sent samples of RMR-1029 to both Battelle and Dugway. Practically all of the science underlying Amerithrax now being reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences is about matching the genetic fingerprint of the attack anthrax to that of RMR-1029. Given that both Battelle and Dugway had RMR-1029, Battelle and Dugway are no less incriminated than Bruce Ivins by the science underlying Amerithrax.

That the FBI has engaged in cover-up in its Amerithrax investigation is readily apparent. This memorandum addresses the urgent matter of what it is that is being covered up...

I posted the following comment at ICH:

Great work, Barry. These anthrax attacks really have demonstrated a most extraordinary level of official incompetence on multiple levels, including the FBI's bungled attempts to pretend to be mounting a serious investigation. If they are going to lie to us, they should at least TRY to make the lies semi-plausible.

More importantly, the fact that nobody in Washington DC or the US media is prepared to mount a ruthless exposure of these anthrax lies tells us everything we need to know about the USA today. Look at the simple logic:

1. The anthrax attacks were an inside job.

2. The FBI and the Bush administration covered up the truth.

3. The Obama administration is not interested in further investigations, even though two top Democrats were targetted.

ERGO:

4. The US military-industrial complex is now as powerful as, or more powerful than, both major parties in the US government. Effectively, it controls the government.

AND:

5. The US military-industrial complex and major political parties are prepared to engineer false reasons for more wars, including targetting US citizens.

Horrifying stuff, but unarguably TRUE!

A Decent Book Review?

Book Review - 'The Ground Truth - The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11,' by John Farmer - Review - NYTimes.com

It doesn’t require scouring the archives to notice that 9/11 was relentlessly exploited by the Bush administration to serve as the founding myth for the war on terror, which was seamlessly expanded from Afghanistan to Iraq. In retrospect, the administration’s public portrayal of itself and the armed forces as acting heroically on 9/11 can be seen as an integral part of the selling of the Iraq war.

Farmer also suggests that the cold war did not come to an end until the 9/11 attacks took place. But this, too, is questionable. In trumpeting an ill-defined war against terrorism, Bush simply transposed the bombast of the cold war to the present to suggest that he was a new Churchill staring down evil and that America needed to combat a new totalitarian threat emerging from the Islamic world. Still, Farmer’s accomplishment is to throw 9/11 into fresh relief. A precise and reliable accounting of what happened has been absent until now. This is it.

Scum

Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

What Galbraith kept completely concealed all these years was that a company he formed in 2004 came to acquire a large stake in a Kurdish oil field whereby, as the NYT put it, he "stands to earn perhaps a hundred million or more dollars." In other words, he had a direct -- and vast -- financial stake in the very policies which he was publicly advocating in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and countless other American media outlets, where he was presented as an independent expert on the region.

Resolve To Withdraw ASAP!

The Associated Press: Obama's hesitancy on war buildup sends messages

"How do we signal resolve and at the same time signal to the Afghans and the American people that this isn't an open-ended commitment?"

So Much For The First Black Female President

Rice And Hadley Look Set To Launch Consulting Firm | TPMMuckraker

In September, the RiceHadley Group LLC was registered as a business in California, under a San Francisco address. According to a source, the venture is to be a "strategic consulting" firm, headed by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, and will be launched imminently.

Neither Rice nor Hadley responded to TPMmuckraker's requests for comment.

A website at the URL "ricehadley.com" is said to be "under construction."

The Only Thing That Surprises Me...

... is that they couldn't get hold of this information themselves. I assume the DoJ/CIA/FBI/etc is staffed with fools while Indymedia has some very clever geeks.

Justice Dept. Asked For News Site's Visitor Lists - Taking Liberties - CBS News

In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day.

The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site "not to disclose the existence of this request" unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization.

No Magic Escape For Australia

Fall in housing starts to impact prices

The myth is that higher property taxes increase the cost of housing and office space over time. The reality is that higher taxes would leave less site-rent to be pledged to banks - thereby reducing the financial cost of property ownership - while also enabling the government to shift the tax burden back off labour on to property, as used to be the case in Australia before the mid-1970s.

This explains why the financial lobby supports the real estate lobby in shaping public perceptions of the property market - along with government financial policy towards the finance, insurance and real estate sector.

Australia's fiscal-financial system has become increasingly dysfunctional in giving tax preference to land-price ''capital'' gains and hence property speculation rather than tangible capital formation. Instead of raising living standards by producing more, what passes as post-industrial ''wealth creation'' takes the form of inflating asset prices on credit. The result is a bubble economy. And inasmuch as asset-price gains are fuelled by debt leveraging, wealth creation is more accurately viewed as debt creation.

The problem is that debts remain in place even as prices drop.

And they are dropping in response to the economy's shrinking ability to pay, as more and more income is earmarked to pay debts run up in the past. This debt service is not available for spending on goods and services. The result is debt deflation. Lower spending on goods and services shrinks the domestic market (and also shrinks imports), leading to lower business profits and also lower business rentals. Lower rental income results in lower property prices - and at a point, property falls into negative equity: the mortgage debt exceeds the current market price that home owners or commercial investors can recover.

This is the end stage of debt-leveraged bubbles.

Violence Bets Violence Begets Violence Begets....

Breaking news

Breaking news
Washington sniper executed by injection: prison

1:39pm Washington sniper John Muhammad has been executed by lethal injection over a series of 2002 shootings that left 10 people dead, a prison spokesman has said.
Obama vows justice for Fort Hood victims

DAPHNE BENOIT 1:34pm US President Barack Obama has vowed justice (IE EXECUTION - G.) as he eulogized the dead of the Fort Hood shootings and warned that even twisted faith could not explain such "craven" mass murder.

So That's All Right Then?

Maybe not quite! But I am sure the professional global warming sceptics will grab at it with both hands...

Ice loss offsets global warming: study

Their estimate, based on images of green algal blooms, is that the phytoplankton absorbs 3.5 million tonnes of carbon, equivalent to 12.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas.

To put it in perspective, this is equivalent to the CO2-storing capacity of between 6,000 and 17,000 hectares (15,000 and 42,500 acres) of tropical rainforest, according to the paper.

The tally is minute compared to the quantities of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels and deforestation, which amounted to 8.7 billion tonnes of carbon in 2007.