`Morrissey was questioned by the FBI and British intelligence after speaking out against Bush and Blair, the singer has revealed.
Mozza, a famous critic of the war in Iraq, has previously branded the US President a “terrorist”. He said: “The FBI and the Special Branch have investigated me and I’ve been interviewed and taped and so forth. They were trying to determine if I was a threat to the government, and similarly in England. But it didn’t take them very long to realise that I’m not.’
`Our government tells us the prisoners at Guantanamo are “the worst of the worst,” to use Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s phrase. “They’re terrorists. They’re bomb-makers, they’re facilitators of terror. They’re members of al-Qaida and the Taliban” is the description from the ever-reliable lips of Vice President Dick Cheney.
“They were there to kill,” the President has asserted. [..]
What do the official findings of the U.S. military show?
More than half of the so-called enemy combatants at Guantanamo were determined to have committed no hostile act against U.S. or coalition forces. This was so even though the definition of a “hostile act” was loose enough to include fleeing a camp that had been bombed, or being picked up in an area of Pakistan where others believed to be fighters had fled.’
`The idea emerged after Jonathan “Yoni” Shimshoni and a team of aspiring inventors in Israel watched a television documentary about victims trapped on the upper floors of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
Shimshoni recalled seeing the towers ablaze and thinking, “This is nuts. This shouldn’t have to happen.”
The team came up with a $1 million escape device with expandable cabins that could be lowered like lifeboats outside a high-rise in distress.’
`Treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay constitutes torture in some cases and violates international law, a leaked UN draft report says.
The document, seen by the Los Angeles Times, suggests that investigators will recommend the prison camp is shut down.
It also questions the legal status of the camp and the classification of detainees as enemy combatants.
US state department spokesman Sean McCormack criticised the draft report as “hearsay”.’
`The CIA’s top counter-terrorism official was fired last week because he opposed detaining Al-Qaeda suspects in secret prisons abroad, sending them to other countries for interrogation and using forms of torture such as “water boarding”, intelligence sources have claimed. [..]
Vincent Cannistraro, a former head of counter-terrorism at the agency, said: “It is not that Grenier wasn’t aggressive enough, it is that he wasn’t ‘with the programme’. He expressed misgivings about the secret prisons in Europe and the rendition of terrorists.”
Grenier also opposed “excessive” interrogation, such as strapping suspects to boards and dunking them in water, according to Cannistraro.’
`It’s a little-noticed legacy of post-9/11 airport security procedures: the brisk commerce spawned by the buying, selling and disposal of the 30 million prohibited items surrendered by passengers at checkpoints.
Some of it is hazardous waste, like Chemical Mace, and is disposed of accordingly. A small portion is pure junk and gets discarded. But scissors, cigarette lighters and pocketknives have value. And, this being the USA, a lucrative market has sprung up around the buying and selling of surrendered items.
Nobody has totaled it up, but the business of disposing of or reselling items banned by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration appears to be valued in the millions of dollars a year. After a traveler leaves behind a banned item – a hunting knife, say – it can follow a strange and convoluted journey to a new owner. That journey often involves a pass through state or local government ownership, and a posting on eBay.’
`The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity. [..]
The core of this effort is a little-known system called Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE). Only a few public documents mention it. ADVISE is a research and development program within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), part of its three-year-old “Threat and Vulnerability, Testing and Assessment” portfolio. The TVTA received nearly $50 million in federal funding this year.’
`In the latest twist in the debate over presidential powers, a Justice Department official suggested that in certain circumstances, the president might have the power to order the killing of terrorist suspects inside the United States. Steven Bradbury, acting head of the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, went to a closed-door Senate intelligence committee meeting last week to defend President George W. Bush’s surveillance program. [..]
A Justice Department official, who asked not to be ID’d because of the sensitive subject, said Bradbury’s remarks were made during an “academic discussion” of theoretical contingencies. In real life, the official said, the highest priority of those hunting a terrorist on U.S. soil would be to capture that person alive and interrogate him.’
`Children as young as 10 could be strip-searched in public by police of the opposite sex without their parents’ knowledge under Victoria’s proposed new anti-terrorism laws.
Draft rules state that strip-searches of children aged 10 to 18 — and of the intellectually impaired — must be conducted by a person of the same sex, in private and in the presence of a parent or guardian, “unless it is not reasonably practicable”.’
‘Too bad Bin Laden does not have an Amazon.com Affiliate Account. With a bit of planning, Osama could have been raking in the dough.
Earlier this month, Bin Laden issued another audiotape single where he threatens the US. In case you thought Osama was evil AND illiterate, you were WRONG. Not only does he read, in his speech, he recommended that Americans read a book called Rogue State by liberal author William Blum.
The result of Osama’s “book club”? As I write this, the book is a top seller on Amazon.com. It is currently #32 on Amazon’s top selling book list. Yesterday it was at #51.’
I have an Amazon associates account, so if you don’t have ads blocked you can buy this book from me. 🙂 Don’t fund terrorism, fund moonbuggy. 🙂
`French President Jacques Chirac has said France would be ready to use nuclear weapons against any state which launched a terrorist attack against it.
Speaking at a nuclear submarine base in north-western France, Mr Chirac said a French response “could be conventional. It could also be of another nature.”
He said France’s nuclear forces had been configured for such an event.’
`Osama bin Laden said al Qaeda was preparing attacks in the United States but the group was open to a conditional truce with Americans, according to an audio tape attributed to him on Thursday.
It was the first purported bin Laden tape since 2004. Al Jazeera television, which aired the tape, said it was dated to the Muslim lunar month corresponding to January.
“The operations are under preparation and you will see them in your houses as soon as they are complete, God willing,” said the speaker on the tape.’
`James Zadroga spent 16 hours a day toiling in the World Trade Center ruins for a month, breathing in debris-choked air. Timothy Keller said he coughed up bits of gravel from his lungs after the towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001. Felix Hernandez spent days at the site helping to search for victims.
All three men died in the past seven months of what their families and colleagues say were persistent respiratory illnesses directly caused by their work at ground zero. [..]
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” [an attorney] said. “Many, many more people are going to die from the aftermath of the toxicity.”‘
`There is a “very high” probability that a terrorist group will strike using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said in comments published Tuesday.
“I rate the probability of terror groups using (weapons of mass destruction) as very high,” U.S. State Department counterterrorism coordinator Henry Crumpton was quoted as saying by the Daily Telegraph newspaper. “It is simply a question of time.”‘
Must be an election coming up or something. Time to get everyone all scared.
`Former Vice President Al Gore called on Congress and the public to resist what he called “a gross and excessive power grab” by the Bush administration amid the war on terrorism, declaring that “our Constitution is at risk.”
Gore said the use of the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans without court approval shows that President Bush “has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently.”
“A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government,” he said.’
`The National Security Agency advised President Bush in early 2001 that it had been eavesdropping on Americans during the course of its work monitoring suspected terrorists and foreigners believed to have ties to terrorist groups, according to a declassified document.
The NSA’s vast data-mining activities began shortly after Bush was sworn in as president and the document contradicts his assertion that the 9/11 attacks prompted him to take the unprecedented step of signing a secret executive order authorizing the NSA to monitor a select number of American citizens thought to have ties to terrorist groups.’
`Space tourists must be screened to ensure they are not terrorists, according to proposed regulations from the US Federal Aviation Administration.
The draft report’s suggestions aim to prevent a terrorist from destroying a spacecraft or using it as a weapon.
However, the report has no strict proposals on the health of any would-be space tourists.’
‘American singer and activist Harry Belafonte called U.S. President George W. Bush “the greatest terrorist in the world” on Sunday and said millions of Americans support the socialist revolution of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.
Belafonte led a delegation of Americans, including actor Danny Glover and Princeton University scholar Cornel West, that met the Venezuelan president for more than six hours late Saturday. Some in the group attended Chavez’s television and radio broadcast Sunday.
“No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we’re here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people … support your revolution,” Belafonte told Chavez during the broadcast.’
`Al-Qaeda is recruiting suicide bombers who are infected with the AIDS virus, according to documents revealed to the Sunday Mirror.
Terror chiefs are also targeting fanatics who suffer other lethal blood diseases such as hepatitis and dengue fever in order to increase their “kill rate” from an explosion. The chilling new threat is revealed in papers distributed to British military camps in Iraq and across Europe.
Under the heading “HIV/Hepatitis” the document states: “There is evidence that terrorists might be deliberately recruiting volunteers with diseases that are spread by blood transference.”‘
`New details have emerged of how the growing number of prisoners on hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay are being tied down and force-fed through tubes pushed down their nasal passages into their stomachs to keep them alive.
They routinely experience bleeding and nausea, according to a sworn statement by the camp’s chief doctor, seen by The Observer. [..]
It is painful, Edmonson admits. Although ‘non-narcotic pain relievers such as ibuprofen are usually sufficient, sometimes stronger drugs,’ including opiates such as morphine, have had to be administered.
Thick, 4.8mm diameter tubes tried previously to allow quicker feeding, so permitting guards to keep prisoners in their cells for more hours each day, have been abandoned, the affidavit says. The new 3mm tubes are ‘soft and flexible’.’
Finally, some hard evidence.
`Kentucky has been awarded a federal Homeland Security grant aimed at keeping terrorists from using charitable gaming to raise money.
The state Office of Charitable Gaming won the $36,300 grant and will use it to provide five investigators with laptop computers and access to a commercially operated law-enforcement data base, said John Holiday, enforcement director at the Office of Charitable Gaming.
The idea is to keep terrorists from playing bingo or running a charitable game to raise large amounts of cash, Holiday said.
But to some, the idea of protecting bingo halls from terrorists is nonsensical.’
It looks a lot like the Anarchist’s Cookbook, just with a different title.
Don’t try this at home, kids. 🙂
`A Pentagon planning document being updated to reflect the doctrine of pre-emption declared by President Bush in 2002 envisions the use of nuclear weapons to deter terrorists from using weapons of mass destruction against the United States or its allies.
The “Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations,” which was last updated 10 years ago, makes clear that “the decision to employ nuclear weapons at any level requires explicit orders from the president.” [..]
“However, the continuing proliferation of WMD along with the means to deliver them increases the probability that someday a state/nonstate actor nation/terrorist may, through miscaluation or by deliberate choice, use those weapons. In such cases, deterrence, even based on the threat of massive destruction, may fail and the United States must be prepared to use nuclear weapons if necessary.”‘
`The documents and photographs confirm that Jean Charles was not carrying any bags, and was wearing a denim jacket, not a bulky winter coat, as had previously been claimed.
He was behaving normally, and did not vault the barriers, even stopping to pick up a free newspaper.
He started running when we saw a tube at the platform. Police had agreed they would shoot a suspect if he ran.
A document describes CCTV footage, which shows Mr de Menezes entered Stockwell station at a “normal walking pace” and descended slowly on an escalator.’
Some British MP at a senate enquiry in the US talking about Iraq. It’s very cool, he lays into them and pretty much tells them they’re all cunts.
(5.7meg Flash video)
see it here »
`An executive jet is being used by the American intelligence agencies to fly terrorist suspects to countries that routinely use torture in their prisons. [..]
Countries with poor human rights records to which the Americans have delivered prisoners include Egypt, Syria and Uzbekistan, according to the files. The logs have prompted allegations from critics that the agency is using such regimes to carry out “torture by proxy” — a charge denied by the American government. [..]
Witnesses described seeing the prisoners handed to US agents whose faces were masked by hoods. The clothes of the handcuffed prisoners were cut off and they were dressed in nappies covered by orange overalls before being forcibly given sedatives by suppository.’
