5/15/2003
2004: Vote Skull and Bones for President :.For those of you keeping score, I reported this back on 4/15/03: Sen. John F. Kerry expounds on many issues in his presidential campaign, but he's completely silent on one topic: his membership in Skull and Bones, Yale's infamous secret society.
"John Kerry has absolutely nothing to say on that subject. Sorry," said Kerry spokeswoman Kelley Benander.
Kerry is a respected senator and a decorated Vietnam War combat veteran, but 36 years after he was initiated into what has been called the "ultimate old boy network," he's wary of breaking the ultra-exclusive club's strict secrecy code.
There's also another high-profile member of the club: President Bush.
Bonesmen already are buzzing over the prospect of the first Bones vs. Bones presidential race should Kerry win his party's nomination and face Bush in 2004.
"Bones don't care who wins," said author Alexandra Robbins, whose book "Secrets of the Tomb" pierced the secrecy shrouding the 171-year-old society. "If Kerry wins, it's still a Bones presidency."
posted by Kevin at 3:44 PM
5/14/2003
U.K.: Dirty Bomb Victims 'May Be Shot' :.POLICE could be forced to shoot members of the public to maintain order in the event of a terrorist "dirty bomb" or biological attack on Britain, it was claimed yesterday.
The Police Federation annual conference in Blackpool was told that so few officers have been trained to deal with a chemical, biological, nuclear or radiological strike that they would have to resort to "very unsavoury but necessary" crowd control.
Bob Elder, the chairman of the constables� central committee, did not refer specifically to officers firing on civilians, but sources within the organisation said it was clear police could have to resort to firearms to stop contamination being spread by fleeing victims.
The government had failed to explain how important it would be to keep the public inside a cordon after such an atrocity, Mr Elder said.
posted by Kevin at 10:06 PM
Saudi Bomb Target was CIA Cutout :.Vinnell used to be owned by---are you ready?---the Carlyle Group: AS BEFITS a company that has been accused of being a CIA front, of recruiting �executive mercenaries� and attempting to overthrow the Prime Minister of a Commonwealth state, the Vinnell Corporation kept a low profile in Riyadh.
Its discreet security fooled nobody, however: the bomb attack was the second it has suffered in eight years. In 1995 seven people were killed. This shadowy corporation is said to have been founded during the Depression. Dan Briody, author of The Iron Triangle, a study of Vinnell�s one-time owners, the Carlyle Group, serialised last week in The Times, says that there is �no publicity, no press releases, no news clippings�.
He adds: �No one knows who the original owners were.�
Vinnell�s work in Saudi Arabia dates back almost 30 years, when it won a contract to train Saudi troops to guard oilfields. A congressional inquiry found that it had agreed a �no Jews� clause. In the 1991 Gulf War Vinnell employees were seen fighting alongside Saudi troops.
posted by Kevin at 9:53 PM
5/13/2003
Gene Chapman is About to Die :.It's day twenty-eight of the death fast. I've been pretty dizzy all day so I've been spending about 20 to 21 hours in bed the last few days. I don't see that the government's doing anything. We haven't cracked open a book or anything. So I'd say that you all better look forward to having a martyr. I think that's going to be the solution here.... I really can't do too much anymore. It's about all I can do to watch TV a few hours a day. I sleep probably 10 to 12 hours a day. I'm taking a little bit of salt with my water like Gandhi did so that's about all I can do.Think about the following quote, as Gene Chapman lies near death: "Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." -Winston Churchill To U.S. Government Cryptogon Readers: Gene Chapman will become more powerful in death than you can possibly imagine. Fair warning.
posted by Kevin at 4:13 AM
American Empire, Not 'If' but 'What Kind' :. (NY Times, free reg. required) The 100,000 American troops patrolling Baghdad and other Iraqi cities retain "absolute authority within Iraq," declared their commander, Lt. Gen. David McKiernan. At the same time, American forces are being deployed in a grand crescent surrounding the greater Middle East, from the Balkans southeast to Djibouti, east through the Persian Gulf region into Pakistan and Afghanistan, and north into Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Little wonder that commentators at home and abroad continually speak of a new American empire. In the last six months alone, as debate on Iraq peaked, the phrase "American empire" was mentioned nearly 1,000 times in news stories, while bookstores have been quickly filling their shelves with freshly minted tomes on the subject.
On one side are those who urge Washington to reject the imperial temptation. These voices can be found on both the far right and the far left. Pat Buchanan, author of "Republic or Empire?" and editor of the new American Conservative Weekly, is concerned that the "conservative movement has been hijacked and turned into a globalist, interventionist, open borders ideology," which, he says, is a far cry from the conservative movement he grew up with. Noam Chomsky, whose "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Domination" is scheduled for publication in the fall, warns that the Bush administration's "forthright declaration that it intends to rule the world by force" amounts to fanaticism.
On the other side are the so-called neoconservatives, who say the United States has the opportunity to remake the world in its own image. The syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, for example, says American foreign policy should seek to transform the unipolar moment of the 1990's into "the unipolar era." William Kristol, the editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, told Fox News recently: "We need to err on the side of being strong. And if people want to say we're an imperial power, fine."See Cryptogon coverage on this from 9/16/02.
posted by Kevin at 3:58 AM
Stakeknife: British Operative was Ranking Member of the Irish Republican Army :.Americans need to learn a lesson from Northern Ireland. The Government = The Terrorists. After following the conflict in Northern Ireland for more than a decade, and visiting places like Belfast and Armagh, I came to the conclusion that nobody knew what was actually happening. Apparently, the Brits knew plenty. Now, we come to learn that a close associate of Gerry Adams, his neighbor actually, the head of the IRA's internal security force, was working for British Intelligence?! I don't know what can be more astonishing than this: It is hard to overstate the size of the explosion that may eventually be detonated by blowing the cover of the army undercover agent codenamed "Stakeknife". The story now threatens to unravel fast. Stakeknife was named in several Sunday newspapers as Alfredo Scappaticci, a name that sounds closer to a mafia godfather than an IRA one. It was not a name that was well known even to most ordinary IRA volunteers. The IRA unit Scappaticci is said to have run, known as "the security team", was, however, widely known and feared, especially by the hundreds of informers working as agents for MI5, the special branch and military intelligence.
The team was responsible for the IRA's internal security and was set up after the organisation realised it was being paralysed by informers. Its task was to flush out informers, interrogate them and then execute them. Often, this involved close analysis of IRA operations that were suspected of having been compromised.
The suspect would be watched and, if the security team smelt a rat, lured to a trap. Then the torture would begin: lighters held under the nostrils, cigarette burns, beatings, shocks from cattle prods, submerging the suspect's head under water - until he or she was ready to confess. That would be followed by a drive to some god-forsaken stretch of the border and a bullet in the head.
For military intelligence, the prize of having the IRA's chief mole hunter in their pay for most of the Troubles is a remarkable coup. In the second world war, the equivalent would have been British intelligence running the head of the Reich security service, Reinhard Heydrich.More: Brit Agent at Heart of IRA for Decades :.Police sources and a fellow IRA mole also identified Scappaticci, a longtime confidante and west Belfast neighbour of Sinn Fein chief Gerry Adams, as Stakeknife. They said his involvement in IRA personnel decisions was devastatingly intimate.More: Other Files on Stakeknife and the Force Research UnitResearch Credit: DG
posted by Kevin at 3:10 AM
5/11/2003
Iraq's Crude Awakening :.The weapons of mass destruction have transformed into wells of mass production. This Time article is a must read: The fact is that oil�who has it, who produces it, who fixes its price�governs everything of significance in the Persian Gulf and affects economies everywhere. While the Bush Administration has repeatedly asserted that Iraq's oil belongs to its citizens�"We'll make sure that Iraq's natural resources are used for the benefit of their owners, the Iraqi people," the President said�the stakes go far beyond Iraq. The amount of oil that Iraq brings to market will not just determine the living standards of Iraqis but affect everything from the Russian economy to the price Americans pay for gasoline, from the stability of Saudi Arabia to Iran's future.
Why is Iraq such a prize? Not only does it have the potential to become the world's largest producer, but no other country can do it as cheaply. That's because, for geological reasons, Iraq boasts the world's most prolific wells. In 1979, the year before Iraq's oil fields were devastated by the first of three wars, its wells produced an average of 13,700 bbl. each per day. By contrast, each Saudi well averaged 10,200 bbl. U.S. wells, which are gradually drying up, averaged just 17 bbl. It would take more than 800 U.S. wells to pump as much oil as a typical Iraqi well. Consequently, production costs in Iraq are much lower. The average cost of bringing a barrel of oil out of the ground in the U.S. is about $10. In Saudi Arabia, it's about $2.50. And in Iraq, it's less than $1, according to Fadhil Chalabi, executive director of the Center for Global Energy Studies in London and former Under Secretary of Oil in Iraq. What's more, most of Iraq's known oil deposits are waiting to be developed. That's why everyone has cast a covetous eye on the country. And why each one of the world's major powers and international groups has an agenda for Iraqi oil.Congratulations. By reading the above passages, you just got a degree in International Relations from the University of How the World Really Works.
posted by Kevin at 4:09 PM
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:. Reading
Fatal
Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture by Andrew Kimbrell
Readers will come to see
that industrial food production is indeed a "fatal harvest"
- fatal to consumers, as pesticide residues and new disease vectors
such as E. coli and "mad cow disease" find their way
into our food supply; fatal to our landscapes, as chemical runoff
from factory farms poison our rivers and groundwater; fatal to
genetic diversity, as farmers rely increasingly on high-yield
monocultures and genetically engineered crops; and fatal to our
farm communities, which are wiped out by huge corporate
farms.
Friendly
Fascism: The New Face of Power in America by Bertram Myron Gross
This is a relatively
short but extremely cogent and well-argued treatise on the rise
of a form of fascistic thought and social politics in late 20th
century America. Author Bertram Gross' thesis is quite straightforward;
the power elite that comprises the corporate, governmental and
military superstructure of the country is increasingly inclined
to employ every element in their formidable arsenal of 'friendly
persuasion' to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Americans
through what Gross refers to as friendly fascism.
The
Good Life
by Scott and Helen Nearing Helen
and Scott Nearing are the great-grandparents of the back-to-the-land
movement, having abandoned the city in 1932 for a rural life based
on self-reliance, good health, and a minimum of cash...Fascinating,
timely, and wholly useful, a mix of the Nearings' challenging
philosophy and expert counsel on practical skills.
Silent
Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth by David Bollierd
In Silent Theft, David Bollier
argues that a great untold story of our time is the staggering
privatization and abuse of our common wealth. Corporations are
engaged in a relentless plunder of dozens of resources that we
collectively own—publicly funded medical breakthroughs,
software innovation, the airwaves, the public domain of creative
works, and even the DNA of plants, animals and humans. Too often,
however, our government turns a blind eye—or sometimes helps
give away our assets. Amazingly,
the silent theft of our shared wealth has gone largely unnoticed
because we have lost our ability to see the commons.
The
Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It: The Complete Back-To-Basics
Guide by John Seymour The
Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It is the only book that
teaches all the skills needed to live independently in harmony
with the land harnessing natural forms of energy, raising crops
and keeping livestock, preserving foodstuffs, making beer and
wine, basketry, carpentry, weaving, and much more.
When
Corporations Rule the World by David C. Korten
When Corporations
Rule the World explains how economic globalization has concentrated
the power to govern in global corporations and financial markets
and detached them from accountability to the human interest. It
documents the devastating human and environmental consequences
of the successful efforts of these corporations to reconstruct
values and institutions everywhere on the planet to serve their
own narrow ends.
The
New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques
for the Home and Market Gardener
This expansion
of a now-classic guide originally published in 1989 is intended
for the serious gardener or small-scale market farmer. It describes
practical and sustainable ways of growing superb organic vegetables,
with detailed coverage of scale and capital, marketing, livestock,
the winter garden, soil fertility, weeds, and many other
topics.
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