: 08/09/06 Recent advances in the public profile of the 9/11 truth movement, owed in part to C-Span's airing of the American Scholars Symposium and Oliver Stone's World Trade Center movie, have provoked a slurry of new hit pieces against 9/11 truth activists. Most are characterized by their twilight zone illogicality and inability to get basic facts correct.
This has to be my favorite 9/11 hit piece of all time, even topping Betsy Hart's 'argument' that 9/11 skeptics are .
It is the most inept and manifestly ridiculous attempt at arguing for the official line that I have ever encountered.
Amazingly it's written by the entire editorial staff - their best and brightest - which must mean that the rest of their journalists are a mixture of kindergarten kids and Rhesus monkeys.
Maturely titled, 'We've had enough of 9/11 conspiracy theorists', this pathetic excuse for an article dismisses WTC demolition evidence by proudly announcing, "Our opinion remains steadfast that it was a terrorist attack that brought the towers down.
"
Maybe my memory is a little faded but I don't seem to remember 'terrorist attack' appearing on the periodic table. I don't think even an extensive Google search will give you any results about a noun melting steel.
Here's another pearl of wisdom.
"The conspiracy theorists claim, in part, that the twin towers collapsed because of internal explosions and not as a result of the hijacked airlines plowing into them. To back this contention, they say the government deliberately reacted slowly to the reports of hijacked planes."
Like some kind of dodgy cut and shut car sold by criminals, the esteemed editorial staff have decided to weld together two different strands of the 9/11 skeptic's argument that are not even directly related to each other.
By bizarrely claiming the skeptics say the NORAD stand down made the buildings collapse creates straw man reasoning.
I can't even adequately lower myself to their demented moronic level of thinking to fully communicate how utterly stupid and retarded their claims sound.
So Mr.
Professor, what caused the collapse of the towers and Building 7, which wasn't hit by a plane, the first time any steel building had collapsed from fire damage in history? "It gotta be 'dem 'dirty low down stinkin' terrorists dat done dem cole-apses, uh huh and 'dat's for damn sure."
It gets worse - in one instance they try to scientifically disprove claims that the government's version of 9/11 is a lie by typing the word,
And giving that word its own paragraph.
Cue their heavyweight historical 'fact' that also proves 9/11 was carried out by 19 dunderheads with box cutters that couldn't even fly Cessna's.
"Every major event creates enough doubting space for those who are always looking under beds. There were those who believed that President Franklin Roosevelt either caused or allowed the bombing of Pearl Harbor to happen in 1941 because he wanted the country to be pulled into World War II.
"
Really? Now c'mon, next you'll be telling me that whole Watergate conspiracy crap actually happened.
Iran Contra?
Nonsense.
And that old conspiracy theory about - a radio intercept station that picked up Admiral Yamamoto's order for the Pearl Harbor attack. Or the declassified - an eight stage plan to provoke a Japanese attack that was implemented at every stage by President Roosevelt.
Our illustrious editors wrap it all up by throwing their toys out of the pram and saying they don't want to hear any more about it. Unfortunately, following the publication of this expose they'll be hearing more about it. A lot more.
of the Sheboygan Press and politely inform them of the fact that they've just been exposed as inept idiots who couldn't win a debate with a 3-year-old.
Coming soon in part 2: Big city papers scoff at 9/11 skeptics, but have trouble getting names right. Is prison planet.
com a radio show hosted by Jack Blood? Is Alex Jones' new film called TerrorWar? The bottomless pit of sloppy research continues.
. . this [was] part of the civil war.
This is 1980. They devastated the south. Hizbullah went in really as a social services organization during the civil war.
They are NOT anti-Jewish. I repeat, they are NOT anti-Jewish."
There goes the anti-semite card.
“There is this great vilification of the Hizbullah people. They are always labeled as terrorists. They have NEVER, despite what Israel says, they have never attacked Israel, they have not attacked the northern border.
It is Israel that has sent rockets into southern Lebanon on almost a daily basis and this is documented in daily UN reports of the situation.
I was in Tyre in 2004 and I saw the Israeli rockets coming over and exploding and the local people shrug their shoulders and say this happens daily.
I was in Beirut in July of 2004, and my husband was there last year, and the Israeli jet fighters come over with no provocation from the Lebanese army or air force - which is pretty weak - and they break the sonic boom, it’s a reminder to people as to who is boss – it’s bullying.
”
Gingrich, of course, meant the term to be derogatory and a means of linking those that oppose Bush's war follies with terrorists. Still, Crazy Newt the serial divorcer was correct in more ways than he fully understands and, too, revealed the Neo-Conservative agenda in a clear and yet, unintended way.
That Gingrich would openly refer to those who oppose Bush-Republican Neo-Conservative madness as being an "insurgency" is, in a very real sense, the first public admission that the Bush regime and Republicans are at war with the American people.
It is a blatant confession of the ultimate Neo-Conservative agenda, i.e. a deliberate and swift movement toward a very real Executive dictatorship wherein those who dissent or disagree are "the enemy" or members of an "insurgency".
Gingrich's use of the term "insurgency" when referring to fellow Americans reveals in no uncertain terms the reality that the Neo-Cons recognize a movement forming that consists of the American people and that is designed to directly challenge their drive toward a nationalist imperialistic dictatorship.
Open and truly democratic governments don't view their political opponents as "enemies" whose opposition is looked upon as an "insurgency", and they certainly don't feel a need to be at war with the people they govern. For Gingrich, Bush, Republicans and the entire Neo-Conservative movement; however, the reality is that the American people are increasingly questioning their "right to rule" and are, therefore, considered enemies or, as Newt Gingrich more aptly said, an "insurgency".
The fact of the matter is that Newt Gingrich is right! There is no better way of defining and describing those American citizens who have formed and continue forming a direct and spirited opposition to the Neo-Conservatives' madness, as being anything other than an "insurgency". Bush and Republicans have busied themselves at the task of disregarding American laws; International laws; have committed war crimes; lied to the American people in order to engage in war with Iraq; unilaterally exempted themselves from the Constitution; committed treason by revealing an undercover CIA agent's name; undermined a free press; illegally spied upon American citizens; instituted a policy of merging church and state; stacked the courts with nefarious individuals that would knowingly and willingly support an Executive dictatorship; provided their crony pals with government appointments and large government contracts that have resulted in grotesque profits without services being provided; raped the nation's treasury; supported big oils' obscene profit taking at the expense of the American people; left New Orleans to rot and refused to help while more than 1,300 citizens perished, and through stygian deception refused to hold anyone to account.
Bush-Republican Neo-Conservatives have consolidated all the government's powers and have used that power as a tool to undermine America's democracy, to viciously assail any citizen who openly disagrees with their policies, and to cow their opposition. As such, the people have no effective systematic recourse or resources through which to oppose their government, other than through the formation of an internet "insurgency".
The Bush-Republican Neo-Conservative form of governance displays all the symptoms of tyranny and as such is deserving of being opposed in the most strenuous manner, including the formation of an internet-based political "insurgency".
It is in fact the patriotic duty of every American citizen to directly confront and oppose the tyranny being imposed upon the United States of America by the Bush-Republican Neo-Conservative movement. Therefore, if Newt Gingrich wishes to expose once and for all, the fact that the Bush-Republican Neo-Conservative movement views the American people as their enemy and chooses to label the American people as being an "insurgency", he is correct in so doing!
What choice do the American people have, but to form an "insurgency" when the current government has consolidated its power in such a way that the people have no legal or Constitutional means through which to protect themselves and their civil liberties?
If Gingrich chooses to label fellow Americans as "enemies" or being part of an "insurgency", I personally welcome his unintended honesty. If fighting for the American way of life, freedom, liberty, and the Constitution makes the blogosphere an "insurgency" the label should be worn with pride.
Hong Kong—According to the Hong Kong based Information Center for Human Rights Democracy (ICHRD), a large-scale clash transpired in July between police and villagers in Wanyuandian town, Liaoning province, China. Forty villagers and ten policemen were injured in the incident. The clash happened nearly one month ago, but authorities banned the media from reporting it.
The incident took place on July 13, and the conflict was triggered by the local government's embezzlement of compensation funds that Wanyuandian Iron Ore, a local enterprise, provided to villagers for occupying their farmland to build roads.
The villagers surrounded the offices of the Wanyuandian government on July 12 and clashed with police. The authorities immediately mobilized 200 policemen from nearby Lingyuan City.
Meanwhile more villagers in Wanyuandian assembled at the offices. The total number of villagers was estimated to be about 2,000. Forty villagers were severely injured and required emergency treatment at the local hospital.
The ICHRD reported that the incident was labeled by Liaoning province as a "Special Significant Group Incident (first level)," and reported it to the Central Commission of Politics and Law. The Party Secretary and Mayor of Wanyuandian have been detained according to the Party's disciplinary regulations.
The ICHRD said that the Chinese State Council and the CCP Central Committee Office have notified all local governments regarding the "Emergent regulation for Large-scaled Group Incidents in China".
However the contents of this document have not been made public.
The ICHRD quoted inside sources as stating that the regulation does not allow the media to report group incidents. It divides group incidents into three levels: the first level is "Special Significant Group Incident" for more than 5,000 participants or greater than 30 people injured; the second level is "Significant Group Incident" where the number of members exceeds 1,000 or more than 10 people are injured; the third level is "Big group incident" with more than 200 participants and more than 10 injured.
The document also requests the National Security department to pay close attention to whether there are so-called foreign "hostile influences" conspired to generate propaganda and take advantage of group incidents.
The three – Amit Ronen, Eldar Avracohen, and Nimrod Lahav – left Israel in February for a tour in Australia.
In July they decided to spend a week in Fiji. On July 13 they arrived at Fiji airport where a surprise awaited them.
"We gave our passports to the officer, and when she saw we are Israelis she asked for ID cards. We told her we don't understand why we need ID cards and she responded shouting: 'You know very well how to ask Palestinians for IDs and humiliate them for three years."
That's what Avracohen wrote in a complaint letter he sent to Israel's Ambassador to Australia Nati Tamir.
The three were held at Fiji airport for six hours and officials rebuked their pleas to be allowed to make a phone call.
Armed policemen took them to a cell at the airport where they spent the night before being sent back to Australia.
"I don't look like a terrorist and there is no reason to point a gun at me," Nimrod Lahav wrote in a letter to ambassador Tamir.
Avracohen wrote that the incident was the most humiliating experience he had ever gone through.
The audience for Fox News' "Dayside" sank to a new low on Tuesday (August 8, 2006) during discussion of the fighting along the Israeli-Lebanese border.
Egged on by substitute host Steve Doocy (or Doocey as the chyron spelled it at one point), the audience literally laughed at the suffering of Lebanese civilians caught between Hezbollah and Israeli bombs.
Doocy was interviewing Tania Mehanna, a senior war correspondent for Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, when he chided Lebanese civilians for not standing up to Hezbollah fighters whom he said are positioning rockets in front of their homes. 'I think I'd be angry as Hezbollah," Doocy said.
Listen to Mehanna's answer and to the audience response.
Later, a man in the audience claimed that Arabs have made up the idea that Israel is bombing Lebanon.
Chilling.
Almost a year after Representative Cynthia McKinney was told by Donald Rumsfeld that it was not the policy of the Bush administration to reward companies that engage in human trafficking with government contracts, the scandal continues to sweep up innocent children who are sold into a life of slavery at the behest of Halliburton subsidiaries , Dyncorp and other transnational corporations with close ties to the establishment elite.
On March 11th 2005, McKinney grilled Secretary Rumsfeld and General Myers on the Dyncorp scandal.
"Mr.
Secretary, I watched President Bush deliver a moving speech at the United Nations in September 2003, in which he mentioned the crisis of the sex trade. The President called for the punishment of those involved in this horrible business. But at the very moment of that speech, DynCorp was exposed for having been involved in the buying and selling of young women and children.
While all of this was going on, DynCorp kept the Pentagon contract to administer the smallpox and anthrax vaccines, and is now working on a plague vaccine through the Joint Vaccine Acquisition Program. Mr. Secretary, is it [the] policy of the U.
S. Government to reward companies that traffic in women and little girls?"
The response and McKinney's comeback was as follows.
Rumsfeld: "Thank you, Representative. First, the answer to your first question is, is, no, absolutely not, the policy of the United States Government is clear, unambiguous, and opposed to the activities that you described. The second question.
"
McKinney: "Well how do you explain the fact that DynCorp and its successor companies have received and continue to receive government contracts?"
Rumsfeld: "I would have to go and find the facts, but there are laws and rules and regulations with respect to government contracts, and there are times that corporations do things they should not do, in which case they tend to be suspended for some period; there are times then that the - under the laws and the rules and regulations for the - passed by the Congress and implemented by the Executive branch - that corporations can get off of - out of the penalty box if you will, and be permitted to engage in contracts with the government. They're generally not barred in perpetuity.
"
McKinney: "This contract - this company - was never in the penalty box."
Rumsfeld: "I'm advised by DR. Chu that it was not the corporation that was engaged in the activities you characterized but I'm told it was an employee of the corporation, and it was some years ago in the Balkans that that took place.
"
Rumsfeld's effort to shift the blame away from the hierarchy at Dyncorp and onto the Dyncorp employees was a blatant attempt to hide the fact that human trafficking and sex slavery is a practice condoned by companies like Dyncorp and Halliburton subsidiaries like KBR.
What else are we to assume in light of recent revelations that Halliburton subsidiary KBR and Dyncorp lobbyists are working in tandem with the Pentagon to stall legislation that would specifically ban trafficking in humans for forced labor and prostitution by U.S.
contractors?
Three years has now elapsed since President Bush's promise to bring an end to this disgrace and the Pentagon is still yet to actually bar the practice.
And the employees themselves that are burned for blowing the whistle, like Kathryn Bolkovac for reporting on Dyncorp officials who were involved in the Bosnian sex trade.
Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is one of very few representatives in high office aside from Cynthia McKinney to on this issue.
We applaud Blagojevich's eforts. The iron curtain of official denial and soft-peddling is falling down.
What has happened to the children who were sold into slavery and forced to satisfy the demands of sick pedophiles working on behalf of the US government?
Where were the investigations and convictions in of establishment orchestrated child slavery and prostitution? Like the for the mushrooming of child prostitution in Kosovo?
What happened to UN officials identified as using a ship charted for 'peacekeepers' to as prostitutes?
In addition, we received an E mail from a person claiming to be a Dyncorp employee stating that a high level Dyncorp official is breaking the law by accepting payment from the US government and in turn the American taxpayer by falsifying timesheets and claiming pay for hours not worked.
The contact states that this was repeatedly brought to the attention of DynCorp program managers by Dyncorp employees but they were told it was "none of their business.
"
It is important to stress that at the moment these are allegations and we have no proof of this other than the validity of the e mail.
The e mail is a reminder that we should always consider the fact that the vast majority of Dyncorp employees are just doing their jobs and have nothing to do with this scandal. It is a small faction at the head of the hydra that have authorized and engaged in these horrors.
We have a government that says it doesn't advocate torture and yet tries to block a law that would end torture. We have a government that repeatedly burns lower level minions to wash its hands of every major scandal that encompasses policies directly administered by the government itself, as in the case of Abu Ghraib and the Dyncorp sex scandal.
A government that covers-up for those who force children into prostitution and slavery is a clear danger to our very way of life.
We must demand answers and finally put an end to a process that exploits and wreaks terror on the lives of the most innocent and vulnerable members of society, whether they be in the Balkans, East Timor or here at home.
Whatever we think of Israel's assault on Lebanon, all of us seem to agree about one fact: that it was a response, however disproportionate, to an unprovoked attack by Hizbullah. I repeated this "fact" in my last column, when I wrote that "Hizbullah fired the first shots".
This being so, the Israeli government's supporters ask peaceniks like me, what would you have done? It's an important question. But its premise, I have now discovered, is flawed.
Since Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, there have been hundreds of violations of the "blue line" between the two countries. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) reports that Israeli aircraft crossed the line "on an almost daily basis" between 2001 and 2003, and "persistently" until 2006. These incursions "caused great concern to the civilian population, particularly low-altitude flights that break the sound barrier over populated areas".
On some occasions, Hizbullah tried to shoot them down with anti-aircraft guns.
In October 2000, the Israel Defence Forces shot at unarmed Palestinian demonstrators on the border, killing three and wounding 20. In response, Hizbullah crossed the line and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers.
On several occasions, Hizbullah fired missiles and mortar rounds at IDF positions, and the IDF responded with heavy artillery and sometimes aerial bombardment. Incidents like this killed three Israelis and three Lebanese in 2003; one Israeli soldier and two Hizbullah fighters in 2005; and two Lebanese people and three Israeli soldiers in February 2006. Rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel several times in 2004, 2005 and 2006, on some occasions by Hizbullah.
But, the UN records, "none of the incidents resulted in a military escalation".
On May 26 this year, two officials of Islamic Jihad - Nidal and Mahmoud Majzoub - were killed by a car bomb in the Lebanese city of Sidon. This was widely assumed in Lebanon and Israel to be the work of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency.
In June, a man named Mahmoud Rafeh confessed to the killings and admitted that he had been working for Mossad since 1994. Militants in southern Lebanon responded, on the day of the bombing, by launching eight rockets into Israel. One soldier was lightly wounded.
There was a major bust-up on the border, during which one member of Hizbullah was killed and several wounded, and one Israeli soldier wounded. But while the border region "remained tense and volatile", Unifil says it was "generally quiet" until July 12.
There has been a heated debate on the internet about whether the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hizbullah that day were captured in Israel or in Lebanon, but it now seems pretty clear that they were seized in Israel.
This is what the UN says, and even Hizbullah seems to have forgotten that they were supposed to have been found sneaking around the outskirts of the Lebanese village of Aita al-Shaab. Now it simply states that "the Islamic resistance captured two Israeli soldiers at the border with occupied Palestine". Three other Israeli soldiers were killed by the militants.
There is also some dispute about when, on July 12, Hizbullah first fired its rockets; but Unifil makes it clear that the firing took place at the same time as the raid - 9am. Its purpose seems to have been to create a diversion. No one was hit.
But there is no serious debate about why the two soldiers were captured: Hizbullah was seeking to exchange them for the 15 prisoners of war taken by the Israelis during the occupation of Lebanon and (in breach of article 118 of the third Geneva convention) never released. It seems clear that if Israel had handed over the prisoners, it would - without the spillage of any more blood - have retrieved its men and reduced the likelihood of further kidnappings. But the Israeli government refused to negotiate.
Instead - well, we all know what happened instead. Almost 1,000 Lebanese and 33 Israeli civilians have been killed so far, and a million Lebanese displaced from their homes.
On July 12, in other words, Hizbullah fired the first shots.
But that act of aggression was simply one instance in a long sequence of small incursions and attacks over the past six years by both sides. So why was the Israeli response so different from all that preceded it? The answer is that it was not a reaction to the events of that day.
The assault had been planned for months.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that "more than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to US and other diplomats, journalists and thinktanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail". The attack, he said, would last for three weeks.
It would begin with bombing and culminate in a ground invasion. Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, told the paper that "of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared ..
. By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board".
A "senior Israeli official" told the Washington Post that the raid by Hizbullah provided Israel with a "unique moment" for wiping out the organisation.
The New Statesman's editor, John Kampfner, says he was told by more than one official source that the US government knew in advance of Israel's intention to take military action in Lebanon. The Bush administration told the British government.
Israel's assault, then, was premeditated: it was simply waiting for an appropriate excuse.
It was also unnecessary. It is true that Hizbullah had been building up munitions close to the border, as its current rocket attacks show. But so had Israel.
Just as Israel could assert that it was seeking to deter incursions by Hizbullah, Hizbullah could claim - also with justification - that it was trying to deter incursions by Israel. The Lebanese army is certainly incapable of doing so. Yes, Hizbullah should have been pulled back from the Israeli border by the Lebanese government and disarmed.
Yes, the raid and the rocket attack on July 12 were unjustified, stupid and provocative, like just about everything that has taken place around the border for the past six years. But the suggestion that Hizbullah could launch an invasion of Israel or that it constitutes an existential threat to the state is preposterous. Since the occupation ended, all its acts of war have been minor ones, and nearly all of them reactive.
So it is not hard to answer the question of what we would have done. First, stop recruiting enemies, by withdrawing from the occupied territories in Palestine and Syria. Second, stop provoking the armed groups in Lebanon with violations of the blue line - in particular the persistent flights across the border.
Third, release the prisoners of war who remain unlawfully incarcerated in Israel. Fourth, continue to defend the border, while maintaining the diplomatic pressure on Lebanon to disarm Hizbullah (as anyone can see, this would be much more feasible if the occupations were to end). Here then is my challenge to the supporters of the Israeli government: do you dare to contend that this programme would have caused more death and destruction than the current adventure has done?
A.)'s publishing arm has released a book that says President Bush organized New York's Sept. 11 attacks.
The decision by the 160-year-old Westminster John Knox Press, the trade and academic publishing imprint of the Presbyterian Publishing Corp., to attribute the attacks on the World Trade Center brings into the U.S.
religious mainstream a conspiracy theory long held by the world's jihadists.
In 'Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action,' author David Ray Griffin calls the United States the world's 'chief embodiment of demonic power, says he initially scoffed at 9/11 conspiracy theories.
But after investigating he concluded that the Twin Towers were brought down by controlled demolition, military personnel were given stand-down orders not to intercept hijacked flights and the 9/11 Commission, ostensibly created to uncover the truth behind the events of 9/11, 'simply ignored evidence' that the administration was involved in the attacks.
Griffin further asserts that such events such as that of 9/11 are part of a long history of 'false-flag attacks,' attacks orchestrated by governments against their own people to garner popular support for military action.
Griffin is a professor at California's Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University, and a codirector of the Center for Process Studies.
I’m saying this. This war on terror is a world war… We got a lot more killing of bad guys to do.”
Sean Hannity, who never served in the military, is still salivating over the thought of a widened Middle East conflict – with other people doing the fighting.
He’s also still ignoring the disasters of the two wars we’re already in. For example, while Hunt promoted more killing, nobody talked about what happened in Iraq today where there were a series of bombs and the Prime Minister we helped put in office said he was “very angered and pained” by a joint US-Iraqi operation in Sadr City.
Nevertheless, Hannity clamors every night for more war.
He asked Hunt, “How naïve is this notion, the New York Times editorial today, that the idea that we can talk to Syria, talk to these terror regimes. Can you talk to Ahmadinejad? Can you talk to an Assad?
Can you talk to Osama bin Laden? Can you get anywhere?”
Hunt replied, “I think we can talk to ‘em and line ‘em up and kill ‘em.
The only reason to talk to some of these guys is to just do that. However we don’t (have to) wipe out, as we talked off-line, the entire country. We have to directly talk to these guys, find out what they want.
If they’re not gonna co-operate, yes, they have to go. But their countries, absolutely, 100%.”
There was no guest with an opposing view.
You can watch the interview on FOXNews.com. Click on "Iran's Endgame" in the Free Video box before it makes the archives.
Four of the five defendants will be tried by American military courts in Baghdad and the fifth, who was discharged for mental instability after the incident, will be tried in federal court in the USA.
The speaker of the Iraqi parliament would prefer that all five be tried in local Iraq courts, but that's not going to happen.
The four men in Iraq are currently undergoing a proceeding called an Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a grand jury hearing. In this proceeding, however, evidence is heard by one investigating officer, who then decides if it goes to trial.
The evidence says the five planned the attack for days, and told fellow officers after the crimes had been committed. The evidence says they took turns raping the girl, 14 years old, while holding her family at gunpoint. They then shot and killed the family and set the girl on fire to destroy the evidence.
Napolitano says the government will seek the death penalty in courts martial for the four in Iraq and also for the one discharged and being tried in his home state of Kentucky.
Comment: There's no way to spin this or make these Marines look good and thankfully Gibson didn't even try. My heart goes out to the Marines' families but mostly my heart goes to that Iraqi family for what they endured.
Industry experts estimate that about 9,000 companies are engaged in providing various security and monitoring hardware, software and services across the mainland.
At stake is a business set to grow almost five times in the next three years.
"The China Public Security Guide estimated the security and surveillance market -- including equipment and services -- was worth US$6.9 billion last year and will reach US$33.
18 billion in 2009," said Terence Yap, a spokesman for Golden Group Corp (Shenzhen), the local subsidiary of United States-listed China Security and Surveillance Technology.
"It's a huge market, but pretty fragmented today. We see consolidation happening, which will help us to become the biggest Chinese player in this industry.
"
China Security, whose over-the-counter shares in the United States have gained 20 per cent this year, has already started to stake its claim for dominance.
Last month, the company agreed to buy all the shares of rival Shanghai Cheng Feng Digital Technology for 120 million yuan.
That transaction will be partly funded from US$14.
9 million in proceeds from its recent private placement.
China Security reported revenues of US$32.7 million last year, up 103.
6 per cent from US$16.1 million in 2004.
"As the Chinese economic and industrial base continues to expand, the need for our services and expertise is becoming increasingly important," said chief executive Tu Guo Shen.
"Additionally, significant events, including the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and the 2010 World's Fair in Shanghai, represent major opportunities for our company."
Installation of security and tracking systems across China gained urgency this year, following the State Council's passage of Ordinance No458 on January 18.
All so-called "entertainment halls" must install video-monitoring systems covering entrances, exits and main corridors by March 1 next year.
This includes all public entertainment venues, such as internet cafes, cinemas, dance clubs and music halls.
The security-conscious climate in China is also being influenced by worldwide efforts to reduce the problems of vandalism, crime and terrorism against large businesses and expensive infrastructure, which in the mainland included transport systems, hotels and the 2008 Summer Olympics venues in Beijing.
Other ordinances passed by the central government that require security surveillance systems to be installed include: all coal mines (currently estimated at 28,000) by the end of 2008; all justice departments and courts; 660 cities throughout China for street surveillance; and retail stores in Xian, where installations must occur before business licences can be granted.
Electronics specialist IMS Research has forecast China to emerge as the largest market in Asia for access control equipment, with a 31.5 per cent regional share by 2009.
More players are expected to enter the market, with Hong Kong offering numerous specialists to help establish or manage the projects.
Despite concerns about privacy, that broad choice will increasingly make it easier and less expensive to implement round-the-clock closed circuit television surveillance and internet-based video monitoring for government agencies, corporations, small businesses, families and individuals, experts said.
Multinational brands such as General Electric, Panasonic and Honeywell have been typically engaged for big and complex security and surveillance projects.
Yet the market is expanding significantly to allow small but aggressive foreign and domestic manufacturers, suppliers and service providers to thrive.
The market opportunities include the estimated US$6 billion to US$12 billion that Beijing expects to spend for security infrastructure in preparation for the 2008 Olympics, along with the planned investment for the 2010 World's Fair.
China Security manufactures, distributes, installs and maintains digital security and surveillance systems - including embedded digital video recorders, digital cameras, digital compression cards and decoders - through its Golden Group subsidiary.
The company's production base is in Shenzhen, with a research and development facility backed by Beijing University.
China Security was recently awarded an exclusive contract worth US$3 million by the Shenzhen Cyber Cafe Association, to provide video monitoring systems for more than 1,000 internet cafes in the city. The project is expected to be completed by next year's deadline.
Hong Kong is also a stakeholder in China's burgeoning security and surveillance market, providing both skilled manpower and sourcing agents.
"In China, there are only 311 Certified Information Systems Security Professionals, which is far below the number needed on the mainland," said Wilson Yuen Yiu-fai, a lecturer of computer studies at the City University of Hong Kong.
"But in Hong Kong, we have 1,267 such professionals. That means Hong Kong can provide a good supply of consultants, technology advisers, or information security auditors to mainland security and surveillance projects.
"
These certified professionals are accredited by the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium, a not-for-profit organisation that oversees the standard of acceptable competence for professionals in its industry.
Experts said Hong Kong is also the best source of high-end security and monitoring products.
Some of that equipment requires licences for re-export from Hong Kong to the mainland, obtained from China's Department of Commerce.
The city re-exported about 25 per cent -- worth US$230 million - of its security equipment imports to the mainland in 2004.
You bet it is. Has been for more than a decade. Did British Petroleum shut the pipe yesterday to turn a quick buck on its negligence, to profit off the disaster it created?
Just ask the "smart pig."
Years ago, I had the unhappy job of leading an investigation of British Petroleum's management of the Alaska pipeline system. I was working for the Chugach villages, the Alaskan Natives who own the shoreline slimed by the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker grounding.
Even then, courageous government inspectors and pipeline workers were screaming about corrosion all through the pipeline. I say "courageous" because BP, which owns 46% of the pipe and is supposed to manage the system, had a habit of hunting down and destroying the careers of those who warn of pipeline problems.
In one case, BP's CEO of Alaskan operations hired a former CIA expert to break into the home of a whistleblower, Chuck Hamel, who had complained of conditions at the pipe's tanker facility.
BP tapped his phone calls with a US congressman and ran a surveillance and smear campaign against him. When caught, a US federal judge said BP's acts were "reminiscent of Nazi Germany."
This was not an isolated case.
Captain James Woodle, once in charge of the pipe's Valdez terminus, was blackmailed into resigning the post when he complained of disastrous conditions there. The weapon used on Woodle was a file of faked evidence of marital infidelity. Nice guys, eh?
Now let's talk timing. BP's suddenly discovered corrosion necessitating an emergency shut-down of the line is the same corrosion Dan Lawn has been screaming about for 15 years. Lawn is a steel-eyed government inspector who has kept his job only because his union's lawyers have kept BP from having his head.
Indeed, it's pretty darn hard for BP to claim it is surprised to find corrosion this week when Lawn issued a damning report on corrosion right after a leak and spill were discovered on March 2 of this year.
Why shut the pipe now? The timing of a sudden inspection and fix of a decade-long problem has a suspicious smell.
A precipitous shutdown in mid-summer, in the middle of Middle East war(s), is guaranteed to raise prices and reap monster profits for BP. The price of crude jumped $2.22 a barrel on the shutdown news to over $76.
How lucky for BP which sells four million barrels of oil a day. Had BP completed its inspection and repairs a couple years back -- say, after Dan Lawn's tenth warning -- the oil market would have hardly noticed.
But $2 a barrel is just the beginning of BP's shut-down bonus.
The Alaskan oil was destined for the California market which now faces a supply crisis at the very height of the summer travel season. The big winner is ARCO petroleum, the largest retailer in the Golden State. ARCO is a 100%-owned subsidiary of .
.. British Petroleum.
BP could have fixed the pipeline problem this past winter, after their latest corrosion-caused oil spill. But then ARCO would have lost the summertime supply-squeeze windfall.
Enron Corporation was infamous for deliberately timing repairs to maximize profit.
Would BP also manipulate the market in such a crude manner? Some US prosecutors think they did so in the US propane market. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) just six weeks ago charged the company with approving an Enron-style scheme to crank up the price of propane sold in poor rural communities in the US.
One former BP exec has pleaded guilty.
Lord Browne, the imperious CEO of BP, has apologized for that scam, for the Alaska spill, for this week's shutdown and for the deaths in 2005 of 15 workers at the company's mortally sloppy refinery operation at Texas City, Texas.
I don't want readers to think BP isn't civic-minded.
The company's US CEO, Bob Malone, was Co-Chairman of the Bush re-election campaign in Alaska. Mr. Bush, in turn, was so impressed with BP's care of Alaska's environment that he pushed again to open the state's arctic wildlife refuge (ANWR) to drilling by the BP consortium.
Indeed, you can go to Alaska today and see for yourself the evidence of BP's care of the wilderness. You can smell it: the crude oil still on the beaches from the Exxon Valdez spill.
Exxon took all the blame for the spill because they were dumb enough to have the company's name on the ship.
But it was BP's pipeline managers who filed reports that oil spill containment equipment was sitting right at the site of the grounding near Bligh Island. However, the reports were bogus, the equipment wasn't there and so the beaches were poisoned. At the time, our investigators uncovered four-volume's worth of faked safety reports and concluded that BP was at least as culpable as Exxon for the 1,200 miles of oil-destroyed coastline.
Nevertheless, m'Lord Browne preens himself with his corporation's environmental record. We know BP cares about nature because they have lots of photos of solar panels in their annual reports -- and they've painted every one of their gas stations green.
The green paint-job is supposed to represent the oil giant's love of Mother Nature.
But the good Lord, Mr. Browne, knows it stands for the color of the Yankee dollar.
BP claims the profitable timing of its Alaska pipe shutdown can be explained because they've only now run a "smart pig" through the pipes to locate the corrosion.
The "pig" is an electronic drone that BP should have been using continuously, though they had not done so for 14 years. The fact that, in the middle of an oil crisis, they've run it through now, forcing the shutdown, reminds me, when I consider Lord Browne's closeness to George Bush, that the company's pig is indeed, very, very smart.
It should be obvious by now Israel intends to ethnically cleanse southern Lebanon, all the way up to the Litani River where the United Nations proposed rebuilding a bridge in order to deliver humanitarian aid. “UN officials contacted the Israeli army to inform them that a team of Chinese military engineers attached to the UN force in Lebanon intended to repair the bridge on the Beirut to Tyre road to enable the transport of humanitarian supplies,” reports the Guardian. “According to the UN, Israeli officials said the engineers would become a target if they attempted to repair the bridge.”
Senior UN officials reacted angrily to the destruction of a temporary causeway over the Litani river overnight. “We must be able to have movement throughout the country to deliver supplies. At this point we can’t do that,” said David Shearer, the humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon.
“The deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure is a violation of international law.”
International aid groups have blamed Israel for not providing security guarantees, thereby paralyzing the delivery of aid to the south. Even when aid reaches Tyre, convoys have to apply on a case by case basis for permission to take it out to the villages.
Most applications are refused.
A convoy run from Beirut to Tyre by Médecins sans Frontières yesterday was forced to stop at the ruins of the causeway. Boxes of medicine were carried over a footbridge by hand and loaded up into separate vehicles on the other side.
According to the Red Cross, there are “100,000 Lebanese trapped in the cut-off areas,” that is to say there are 100,000 people Israel will need ethnically cleanse, as all Lebanese are Hezbollah.
Even getting aid into Lebanon itself has become increasingly problematic. The only land crossing open to UNHCR is on the northern border at al-Aarida, 100 miles north of the capital, Beirut.
The price of fuel has rocketed to more than £200 a tank, Beirut’s airport is almost completely unusable and any aid arriving by sea has to get a green light from Israel’s naval blockade before it is allowed to proceed.
Did I mention that all Lebanese are Hezbollah? As such, only a trickle of humanitarian aid will be allowed to enter the country.
Meanwhile, instead of negotiating an end to the “conflict” (invasion and massive violations of international law), Bush is kicking back at his faux cowboy ranch in Texas and Tony Blair is on the beach in Barbados, a former British colony and one-time transit point for African slaves.
Of course, the Israelis would not admit they are deliberately denying vital humanitarian aid to Lebanese babies and grandmothers—or rather those they have not killed with artillery and missiles, courtesy of the United States. No, instead they tell us humanitarian aid is an excuse for Iran to deliver weapons to Hezbollah.
“In a briefing before the Cabinet yesterday, head of the Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Division, Major General Amos Yadlin, said that Iran is supplying Hizballah with weapons under the guise of innocent humanitarian aid convoys,” reports Israel Today.
According to Democracy Now, the “Israeli military is reportedly planning to ramp up its attacks on Lebanon by targeting more of the civilian infrastructure as well as symbols of the Lebanese government. One military official told the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz ‘It could be that at the end of the story, Lebanon will be dark for a few years’….
Mark Shnellbaecher [a Catholic Relief Services representative]… suggests that Lebanon could run out of fuel within the week, leading to a humanitarian catastrophe that will not be easily solved by ceasefire alone.”
“The missed cease-fire decision basically means that multitudes of civilians go on pouring into the mountains, or to the Syrian and Jordan borders, which is an epic voyage,” Gianni Rufini, associate professor specializing in post-war reconstruction and development at the University of York in Britain told IPS from Amman, according to Frost Illustrated. “Furthermore, water and basic food reserves—whose prices have risen 400 percent in Beirut since the beginning of the crisis—are quickly dwindling, while tonnes of food stand on the frontiers since immunity for the convoys has not been respected so far.
”
In other words, the aid is bottlenecked because if the NGOs attempt to deliver it, they will be targeted by Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, pushed out of the headlines by Israel’s invasion and crimes against humanity in Lebanon, UNICEF special representative in occupied Palestinian territory Dan Rohrmann said “it is clear that children are living in an environment of extraordinary violence, fear and anxiety,” according to a UN press release. “UNICEF reminds all parties that all children have rights, including those to health, water, education and protection.
These rights must be safeguarded irrespective of the environment they happen to live in. Protection of civilians including children, as per the 4th Geneva Convention, is an obligation under international humanitarian law, the press release concluded,” reports IRNA.
Obviously, the bureaucrats at UNICEF are clueless.
Killing and traumatizing children is part of the Master Plan for Greater Israel, what Condi calls the New Middle East. Remember, as mass murder apologist Alan Dershowitz told us, some civilians are more innocent than others. Naturally, the children of Gaza, as those of Lebanon, are terrorists, so who can complain if they are bombed, terrorized, subjected to weird chemicals, sonic booms in the middle of the night, the lack of clean water, backed up sewage and garbage piled up in the streets, inviting disease and an inevitable epidemic.
Blame Hezbollah and Hamas.
In order to make sure this dire situation moves along smoothly, Israel attacks NGOs attempting to help the Palestinians in Gaza. “As NGOs scale up their humanitarian response, they have assessed the impact of the recent hostilities on their ongoing programs,” reports the Palestine News Agency:
In Beit Lahia 27 greenhouses recently rehabilitated by CARE were completely destroyed and another 23 were damaged in the last month.
Approximately 100 square meters of the Beit Hanoun Municipality playground, rehabilitated by Save the Children, was severely damaged and 30 meters of the playground’s wall were knocked down.
World Vision’s partner agency the Union of Agricultural Work Committees reports extensive damage to their Beit Hanoun office and loss of equipment as a result of a recent offensive.
Other NGOs report recent damage to project sites, delays in implementation due to lack of access and the freezing of donor funds for certain activities.
Don’t expect the New York Times or Fox News to report these incidents, flagrant crimes against humanity. As for the latter, they are too busy chalking up the death toll in Lebanon to shoddy construction, not Israeli bombs (see “Dayside” Audience Laughs at Lebanese Deaths).
Obviously, the American public, or those in the audience of “Dayside” at least, are one step down the ladder from the warmongers and ethnic cleansers in Israel.
Bush and his sycophants have wrought both in Iraq and the United States.
First, from the Catholic News Service: "Half of All Christians Have Fled Iraq Since 2003, Says Baghdad Bishop." Excerpt:
Chaldean Catholic Auxiliary Bishop Andreos Abouna of Baghdad said that before the invasion there were about 1.
2 million Christians in the predominantly Shiite Muslim state. Since then the overall number has dropped to about 600,000, he said. "What we are hearing now is the alarm bell for Christianity in Iraq," the bishop said.
"When so many are leaving from a small community like ours, you know that it is dangerous – dangerous for the future of the church in Iraq."
…About 97 percent of the country's total 27 million Iraqis are Shiite and Sunni Muslims; Christians make up the majority of the remaining 3 percent. The Chaldean Catholics speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus.
….Many people were unnerved by the lack of security and confidence in the political process that was supposed to usher in a new era of peace, democracy and rule of law following the removal of President Saddam Hussein by coalition forces, Bishop Abouna said.
……Bishop Abouna said he thought it was unlikely that many of those who had emigrated would return.
The destruction of Iraq's Christian community – one of the oldest in the world – is no mean feat. The religion took root in the land in the first generation after the Romans executed the troublesome of Nazareth, and has flourished there for almost 2,000 years. Now it is being wiped out before our eyes.
Half gone already, it will certainly disappear altogether in the next few years, as civil war consumes the nation, and sects devoted to the most fanatic and retrograde distortions of Islam – empowered beyond measure by the Bush Faction's war of aggression – impose their draconian rule. Surely the oh-so-Christian Coalition of Bush and Blair will record this with their many high and worthy deeds.
As the story notes, Iraq's Christians still speak the language that Jesus spoke, a fragment of which is preserved in the English Bible that we're told Bush reads every day – the cry from the cross: "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?
" My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It's a lament of utter existential despair that is no doubt echoed every day by his followers in the "liberated" land.
But of course Bush doesn't speak the language of Jesus, literally or metaphorically.
(With the possible exception of the world-devouring Pantocrator portrayed in the Book of Revelation, a work of genocidal frenzy well-described by Martin Luther: "Christ is neither taught nor known in it." Naturally, this Grand Guignol is a great favorite among the sects devoted to the most fanatic and retrograde distortions of Christianity – i.e.
, Bush's loyal "base.") No, the itinerant preacher who denounced the rich and served the poor is incomprehensible to the Crawford Caligula. Bush speaks only the language of Caesar: brute force, adorned with preening, self-serving lies.
This imperial mendacity undergirds the second story in our lightning flash. This is an AP report – an excellent piece of work by Charles Hanley – on the alarming poll showing that fully 50 percent of all Americans now believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction at the time of the Bush invasion. This number represents a hefty increase in credulity from the 36 percent of Ostrich-Americans who held this same false belief just last year.
As Hanley notes, one major factor in this higher heaping of horseshit was the codswallop disgorged last month by a pair of greasy pols: the swiftly sinking, sex-obsessed, K Street corruptocract Sen. Rick "Saneless" Santorum and his House-mate, Rep. Pete "Huckster" Hoekstra.
With great, Fox-fueled fanfare, the dimbulb duo released an "intelligence report" claiming that WMD had indeed been found in Iraq – fully "justifying" Bush's Babylonian conquest.
What they had "unearthed," of course, was the decidedly unsecret fact that over the course of three years, Iraq's occupiers had come across a few old chemical weapon shells scattered here and there around the country. These were remnants of the once-great arsenal of deadly toxins that Saddam had amassed with the direct and ample aid of a U.
S. president named George Bush, who explicitly ordered American agencies to approve the shipment of weaponizable poisons and other "dual-use technologies" for WMD to his favorite tough guy, Saddam. But Saneless and Huckster were trumpeting was not a noble casus belli but simply the fetid leavings of a former Bush Family crime.
As Hanley points out, "the Pentagon and outside experts stressed that these abandoned shells, many found in ones and twos, were 15 years old or more, their chemical contents were degraded, and they were unusable as artillery ordnance. Since the 1990s, such 'orphan' munitions, from among 160,000 made by Iraq and destroyed, have turned up on old battlefields and elsewhere in Iraq, ex-inspectors say. In other words, this was no surprise.
"
What was the truth of the situation? Hanley again: "The reality in this case is that after a 16-month, $900-million-plus investigation, the U.S.
weapons hunters known as the Iraq Survey Group declared that Iraq had dismantled its chemical, biological and nuclear arms programs in 1991 under U.N. oversight.
That finding in 2004 reaffirmed the work of U.N. inspectors who in 2002-03 found no trace of banned arsenals in Iraq.
"
The story makes clear that is not just the Congressional con-men and the knowing liars on Fox News hoodwinking the public. In this case, as in so many others in our fetid day, the fish rots from the head:
"I think the Santorum-Hoekstra thing is the latest 'factoid,' but the basic dynamic is the insistent repetition by the Bush administration of the original argument," said John Prados, author of the 2004 book Hoodwinked: The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War.
Administration statements still describe Saddam's Iraq as a threat.
Despite the official findings, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has allowed only that "perhaps" WMD weren't in Iraq. And Bush himself, since 2003, has repeatedly insisted on one plainly false point: that Saddam rebuffed the U.N.
inspectors in 2002, that "he wouldn't let them in," as he said in 2003, and "he chose to deny inspectors," as he said this March.
The facts are that Iraq — after a four-year hiatus in cooperating with inspections — acceded to the U.N.
Security Council's demand and allowed scores of experts to conduct more than 700 inspections of potential weapons sites from Nov. 27, 2002, to March 16, 2003. The inspectors said they could wrap up their work within months.
Instead, the U.S. invasion aborted that work.
As recently as May 27, Bush told West Point graduates, "When the United Nations Security Council gave him one final chance to disclose and disarm, or face serious consequences, he refused to take that final opportunity."
All of them – Bush, Rice, Hoekstra, Santorum, the warmongering nabobs at Fox News – know they are peddling lies. The truth is too glaringly obvious to ignore, even for a pathologically incurious, spoon-fed twit like Bush.
But they don't care. Hanley's story is one of the very few in the mainstream press to have ever laid out the facts alongside their lies in a calm, straightforward fashion. It's clear, concise, quietly but utterly devastating – and it won't make a damn bit of difference.
The Bushists know that a wire story buried on page 16 of the Topeka Times – or even splashed on the front of the Washington Post – poses no threat to their propaganda machine. They know that the majority of Americans get their "news" from TV – or rather, from glimpses at the scrolling headlines rolling by under the bland, blathering, blow-dried heads of the anchors and the fulminating mugs of the countless hard-right apparatchiks who dominate the screen. The lies will go on – and the corpses will keep piling up, despite the occasional flash of lightning piercing through the dark.
This is an irrefutable argument.
Dershowitz tells us that the Lebanese had it coming. They are "collaborators.
" This is the same exact argument Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden make - we can kill their civilians because they support a government that kills ours.
I know, I know, Alan - go ahead and tell me about how the Israelis are perfectly innocent and they never started a thing and they are only victims here. It is the evil, terrorist Arabs that started all the wars - and deserved to have their women and children massacred.
It's ironic that a man who throws around charges of prejudice (anti-Semitism) doesn't mind being blatantly prejudiced himself. For Dershowitz, Lebanese civilians deserve to be killed - read his post - that is exactly what he is saying. But Israeli civilians, I am sure, are God's children.
If anyone touches them, they are terrorists.
He claims that many of the "civilians" in Lebanon help, support, house and financially provide for Hezbollah fighters who kill Israeli civilians. Under that logic, all Israeli civilians help, support, house and financially provide for Israeli soldiers who kill Lebanese civilians.
So, are they all fair game?
Israelis' tax money directly goes to support the Israeli bombs being dropped on Lebanese women and children. Every man and woman in Israel must serve in the Israeli army (actually the white Jews, Druze and Circassians, but that covers most of the country).
And almost every single household has supported an Israeli soldier at some point. Guilty!
Remember I am not making this argument.
Alan Dershowitz is. All I am doing is taking his logic about the Lebanese civilians and applying it to Israeli civilians. I do not support his logic.
I condemn it.
He also says the Israel has warned the Lebanese that they must move out of their homes, otherwise they could be killed. How considerate.
I wonder how Dershowitz would feel if someone dropped a leaflet on his front porch telling him that if he doesn't immediately move out of his house, he will be killed. Would he feel like he got a fair warning and the only appropriate action was to run away?
Let's put that hypothetical question aside for now (and I cannot emphasize enough that it is a hypothetical; he is the one arguing for actual violence here, not me).
Let's get to reality. Hassan Nasrallah has gone on television and warned the civilians of Haifa, Tel Aviv and all of Israel that Hezbollah will be firing rockets into their cities. According to Dershowitz's logic, they have been warned and if they stay, they are "complicit.
"
Israel gives warning. Then kills civilians. Hezbollah gives warning.
Then kills civilians.
Actually, so far Hezbollah has killed more soldiers than civilians. Israel cannot come close to saying the same.
One of Dershowitz's arguments is that terrorists try to maximize civilian casualties and democracies try to minimize them. Is he calling Israelis terrorists again?
The fact that Israel can annihilate everyone in Lebanon and chooses not to is a small comfort to me.
I'm being literal. It shows they are not interested in the death and oppression of all Arabs. That is a little comforting.
But I hope to God we have a higher standard for them than that. Dershowitz, on the other hand, seems to take great comfort in this fact. Israel could have killed everybody and since it only killed ten civilians for every one Hezbollah fighter, it is trying to "minimize" civilian casualties.
Here it comes. This is the point when Dershowitz brings out the oldest canard in the book. If it was up to the Arabs, they would kill all the Jews - so every thing we do in "self defense" is justified.
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